Show Notes
Today on The Jay Allen Show, Jay speaks with Brye Sargent "The Safety Geek". During the conversation they discuss Brye's career, how she got into safety and what she loves about it!
Brye has been a dedicated Safety Professional for 20 years and has trained over 130 Safety Managers. Her passion is coaching and training safety managers, who struggle to get support for their program, effective strategies and techniques to change their company's culture and become safety leaders. The Safety Geek is an online resource featuring an active community, articles, blog posts, templates, and training focusing on management support, the psychology of safety and creating a safety culture.
Hear it all today on The Jay Allen Show!
The transcript is not perfect.
[00:00:02] spk_0: This is this show is brought to you by safety FM. Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the J ALLen show. Hopefully everything is good and grand inside of your neck of the woods. Well, I have to tell you it's been an interesting summer so far, really enjoying the time being able to meet some new people digitally and in Persian and so on. So I have to tell you what is going on here today During the recent event at Safety Day 2021. I was actually on the air, you know, doing the stuff that we do here at safety FM and I took a look around and from a distance, I saw someone that I had seen on social media several times over. I paused what I was doing in regard to the live event, ran to her and said, listen, I don't know how we need to work this out, but I would definitely love to have you on the show. I knew it wasn't gonna be at that particular moment in time that would be able to do it. But we knew that it would be occurring at some point in the future and this is the point in the future, which will now be our past, that what we're talking about here today. So let me tell you about bryce sergeant. Most of us though, know her as the safety geek and I mean that with as much respect as possible, keep that in mind too. Brian has been a dedicated safety professional for over 20 years and has trained over 130 safety managers, her passion and coaching and training safety managers who struggle to get support for their program, effective strategies and techniques to change their company's culture and become safety leaders. The safety is an online resource featuring an active community articles, blog post templates and training focusing on management support and the psychology of safety in creating a safety culture. Today is my pleasure to sit down and speak to rice sergeant here on the J ALLen show show is streaming now on safety FM dot life. Sorry, sorry that this took so long to happen because I was thinking about this actually before I contacted you and I was like, we had a conversation, I want to say it was like a year and a half ago. Yeah, yeah, I think it was now. It is june so yeah, it happened like in january I think of a year ago. So yeah, I was thinking and I was like, it was kind of like a pre, but nothing ever happened and I was like, man, that was a lost opportunity. So I'm glad that we're finally able to get together today. Well, thanks to you. Thanks to you. I've just been like so busy and I, and I forget like reaching out into the community is so important. It's like I'm in my little bubble and I need to sometimes break out of my bubble, which is what I teach, which is kind of funny. Well it's interesting that you call your bubble little because that isn't the kind of the perception that I'm seeing at least on my end because we see you everywhere. And I mean that in a good way, You post a lot of information in your everywhere, which is kind of where we started. Um, we were at safety day 2021. I almost said the wrong year there. Um, and I ran into you and I definitely did not want to miss the opportunity. So I ran to you. I stopped what I was doing cause I want to make sure that I got to you and say, Hey, let's try to do this together. So the funny part about this is I wanted to have a conversation, but I wanted to be everything that you have going on because I'm so intrigued by your career and the things that you have going on that of course I I have to ask the most simplest question and of course the most difficult to win all at the same time. How in the heck did you get involved in this world of safety? Yeah. So I fell into my lap. I was actually doing safety before I knew that I was doing safety. So um I was a hotel manager for a holiday in, Oh, you want name brand? You're one of the brave ones most people like for Brandon, they never say it. So I'm glad you said it. No holiday in and as part of managing a hotel you have to manage expenses. And I was really, we're talking 26 years ago and I am only 29. So I was like three years old at the time. So I was very, very green and I didn't know what I was doing and the insurance company was coming to renew and they said you know we have a risk department, why don't we have them come out and help you? And I was like sure you know awesome. So I started working with the risk department and creating safety policies and training and um ergonomics and like investing, investigating accidents and doing trend analysis. I didn't know I was doing a safety program. So I left the hospitality industry mainly because if you've ever worked in hospitality it is literally eight days a week, 24 hours a day. And I was starting a family. So I left the hospitality industry and I said you know what, I want to get a job where I'm not managing anybody, I just want a cubicle and that is it. So I found this job at the local um I thought it was a local coop. It ended up being like one of the largest co ops in the country like larger than ocean spray. And I was working in their accounting department and they were getting sued by the E. P. A. And they needed some help. Yeah they need some help preparing for the lawsuit for the E. P. A. And I was like sure I got time I'll help. And that was how I ended up in safety because they had a brand new safety director and basically I started working in their department. I got hired with them like june or july and on september 11th this is how this is how I remember september 11th in my mind, I was preparing for the E. P. A lawsuit and getting my binders ready to present in court. So like bye bye. I started them in june and by september I was working in safety so I knew nothing about it at the time. But what was so crazy is that they were mainly a farming transportation feed, male type facility. And as I started working and I was like oh my gosh, this is what I did at the hotel. Let me ask that real quick. So how does the company say okay we're going to go ahead and go go there with you especially with not having a background in safety. So how were you able to I guess go through the conversation where they can rely on you in doing this. They hired me when I moved from the accounting department into the safety department, I was just a clerk. So I started out as a clerk and the director of safety. So we had a director of safety and we had to administrators in there and I was one of the administrators. Um she just took me under her wing and saw that I guess like I could learn this stuff and really it just comes natural to me anyway because I'm like I'm a safety geek through and through like I was a safety geek when I was like 10 years old. So it was, it just came naturally to me and I just worked my way up and within a couple of years I was the director of safety for that coop because she moved on to operations. Very fantastic. Yeah. So that's the journey start and from everything that we could find. Oh my, did you take a deep dive inside of this stuff? You have went from National Safety Council training to be CSP training to the University of Central florida. I mean you've been doing a little bit of everything in regards of becoming well known within the industry, number one, but also getting everything that you would need to be accredited to, for people to really realize that you have everything going on and you have one of those things that I love that a lot of people don't talk about Smith system. Oh, I love this. I'll tell you, my son got a job, my son is 27 now, but he got a job working for Children 29. How does that work? I know, I know, crazy. I'm, but he got a job working for Triple A and they put him through smith system training and I was so freaking excited about it, I was like, yes, all good kids love milk. It's kind of funny because I remember going to a smith system of training many, many years ago, I actually went to their facility in Arlington texas. Now I have to tell you that the room that's that, that they actually train you and it's a little bit tortuous, I have to admit, here it is a giant glass window where you get to see six flags and where the new texas stadium is and I'm like, how is this going to be accommodating to actually be inside of a classroom? So it's always kind of like how did you end up going into the smith system, how did you decide that that was going to be something you were interested in? So when I was yeah when I was the director at the trucking company, you know safety can only take you so far like regulations and everything can only take you so far. I like to call that like the low hanging fruit. So when I started with the co op and it was mainly trucking, we have 550 drivers. Um we got rid of all the low hanging fruit just by following regulations, right? But the regulations are just a C grade. So once you really want to start diving deep in your safety program and reducing costs and stopping accidents you gotta get more intensive. So I was like I was already looking into the Bendix system and this was like way before it became like my car has it now and I this was before it was even available there and like lane change warning and all of that. I was like that's the engineering part, let's how can we get better, how can we train our drivers better. So to me the smith system with like the best system out there. It was just I agree, I agree and I love how like like at the same time I also tested National Safety Council's defensive driving program which you do online and it's good it's a good online course but when you're teaching driving skills you need to be out there on the road. And um that's what smith system teaches you. And I had I was lucky enough to have a team of driver trainers, I had six driver trainers, so I got all of them certified as miss system trainers as well. And they would not only train my new drivers on it, they also trained um they did the retraining on all of my current drivers and any like near miss, any accident, anything like that. They would then jump out there and then retrain them again. So we have brought our accident rate down below it too, they, like when I started there we were literally spending millions like $3 million dollars a year on claims and when I left there I think it was like 200,000 at the most. Did you ask for a percentage of the cut? I'm just asking 100 like every year. I don't understand why we do not get kickbacks on the insurance savings. I mean it's it's an interesting question. I agree with you 100% there and I say that sarcastically but not sarcastically all at the same time because it's interesting to see on how some of the changes actually do occur, especially if you're saying that you had a fleet size of 550 drivers inside of there, especially if you're actually doing that kind of savings. It's always interesting on how the outcome works. So as you do this change and you're saving the company, that kind of money, what are they telling you? Are they, are they all of a sudden saying you can expand your wings a little bit more and do some other things inside of the organization or what are they saying? Yeah, yeah. Once once you, once you start seeing those results, they do kind of let you then like, no, we trust bry we know that she can do her stuff. Um and then they let you do more and more, did you did you like that aspect of it or were you kind of questioning about? Okay, now they're giving me more, more and more things on my plate. Well, I'm a bit of a control freak and that's actually a problem of mine, so I love to get more and more, but then I end up having so much on my plate that I'm just like, oh my gosh, I'm stressed out. Which is why j it took 18 months for us to get on the phone together. So hold on, you should have sent me the invite is what you're saying, that I totally shouldn't. I am I just have a hard time saying no, a lot of times, and a lot of times when I see that things can be changed or things can be fixed. Like, a great example is it's working for this company where, you know, I'm like, why aren't we doing flu shots or why aren't we doing a wellness program? If we had a wellness program, it would help my strain and sprain injuries and technically that's an HR job, but HR never stepped up to the plate. But you know, if I did it, I did get some benefit out of it. So yeah, let's do a wellness program. Let's do flu shots. Let's do all that stuff. Now. You do realize that that's the only company you haven't named by name. We'll leave it at that. We don't. No, no, no, no, I'm just joking. I was joking. You go through these different stages of your career and you're doing the things that you're doing. So at what moment do you go? Okay. I have helped out these different industries. I've enjoyed the private sector for, for a period of time. Now it's time to go out on my own. And the safety geek, I won't say the safety Geek was born, especially after you said that you've been a safety geek since you were 10, but all of a sudden the name and the branding is open out to the world. So what gives you the idea and why do you go ahead and decided to take the dive at this time? Because I'm going to be an empty nester. Okay, so my kids are growing up within a year, they're both going to be gone to college and I'm going to have my life back to myself and I can do whatever I want. Don't listen to these kids, Don't listen to the kids in regards to hearing this, that's not what she meant. Her life is changing. I started examining going like what kind of job do I want and what do I really like to do and what do I really like to do? I love technology, I love like website design, I love um getting my hands in there with like, you know, coding and all of that. But what I also love is talking to safety manager. So my last corporate job with Cisco, I was actually training all of their safety managers. So my calendar was full every week with phone calls where all I got to do is talk to safety managers. And I was like, how can I combine those two? So I basically took the training that I was doing for Cisco, which at the time I called it the safety boot camp and I said, how can I move that and transition that into an online platform? So that's basically where safety he came from and that's where safety management academy came from. So as you decide to do this, why are you willing to take the risk on yourself? Because most people when they have a corporate position, especially the way that you just worded that will not take that kind of risk because, well let's say slightly guaranteed paycheck to all of a sudden, you only get what you kill out there now when you're hunting. So why did you decide to take this risk? Right at that moment? To be honest with you, I didn't have a choice. Good reason. Cisco at that time had gone through three layoffs, They've now gone through four and I was part of the third lay off for the department and at the time that they laid me off, I was actually scheduled to have knee replacement surgery. Um, so I literally couldn't walk at the time that they laid me off. So I was like, okay, what can I do? Because I'm going to have nine months before I can walk. Let me give this idea a try. And I have had so much fun building the safety geek that now it is what 2.5 years later and I'm still doing it well. The interesting part is that you did the coursework, you said you like coding, which I like the nerd talk there for sure, or the geek talk for there for sure. So when you decided to do this, all of a sudden you introduce a podcast at the same time to where you're going out there and you're giving your messaging, um I've seen your website change from a little bit in regards from when you first launched, where you're at now. So as you're looking at this and you say, let's do a podcast, of course this before right now, as we're going through the pandemic with the slew of podcasts that have come out in the side of the world. But when you start to decide, hey, I'm going to give a podcast and give out this information. What was the decision behind that? Well, I had a podcast 10 years ago, So that was just given and I'm a podcast junkie. Okay. It's interesting because when you say that to people in regards that you did a podcast 10 years ago, people were going, there was podcast 10 years ago. You don't, people don't realize that they were actually out in the late 90s. This is kind of the fun part. So as your podcast junkie and you did a podcast 10 years ago. What was it about back then? If you tell me safety stuff, I'm really gonna freak out for a moment. I bet you can't even guess what it was about. Well, I don't know. Um, you said hospitality and driving earlier. You said something about 2001. Um crouching. Let's go with that. You said I can't take a guess. So close. You are so close. It was a quilting podcast. Yeah, we were extremely close. So I had at that time 10 years ago I was actually building an online website for um quilters for them to track their projects. And then I had a quilting podcast and all of that. And then an opportunity at Cisco came along and that just seemed like a better opportunity at the time. So like I was coding that website but I was like no okay I'm going to take the opportunity with Cisco. So I gave up on that dream 10 years ago. So I guess like turning it around. I probably could have started a quilting podcast again. But I just wanted sometimes you don't want to monetize your hobbies, but if you can find work that you love, which is what I do. I was like, let me let me make a business out of that instead. So as you take the dive into this business that you love all of a sudden there's been some turns and twists and I mean this in the best of ways. So recently I want to say it wasn't, it was a few weeks ago at this point you were featured on the Spring Leaders magazine for the V. P. P. A. How did this come about? I would love to say that I had a hand in it but I did not. It's like so like it's just like reaching out to you is on my list of things to do, re counter no serious. But reaching out to all the magazines was on my list of things to do to. And then B. P. P. P. A. Reached out to me and they said, hey, we've been watching you and we really like what you're doing, would you consider writing an article for us? And I was like, yeah, sure. I'm, I am. I used to be an S. G. With OSHA and I'm a VP. P specialist. So I love V. P. P. I love it way more than I. So and all of that. So I was like, yes, definitely. I never even miss your conference unless I have to. So they said, we want to hear your story and like what, what drove you into safety. Actually what you just asked me what drove me into safety and what led me to the safety geek. So I was like, sure. So I wrote the article and lucky enough because I have an online business, I knew that having photos available of me was helpful. So she's like, you can you can submit photos, you you um if you want, you know, and I was like, yeah, that's fine. Here's a couple that you can use. It's just my normal, you know, branding photos and next thing I know they put me on the cover, so I'm super grateful to them, definitely humbled. Um and they just said how much they love my article. So which so here's so here's the interesting part. So congratulations number one for making it on there. And then as you're taking a look at this and this has changed. If you look back five years ago, would you expected this to happen? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. So how do you look at it? Do you look that it was great timing and good content or how do you look at how this occurred for you? Especially because they reached out to you? No pressure. Right. You know what's so funny is that I always set goals for myself of like really big goals and I have had this like 10 year goal that I had reached right at 10 years and I was like, what is my next 10 year goal going to be? And I was playing around with the idea of a keynote speaker at like the V. P. P. P. A conference or something like that. And I never really solidified it. So I could say it was kind of in the background of my mind. But then part of me was like, do I really want to do all that work? I'm getting very close to retirement. Wait a minute. No, no, no, no. If the cancer leaving the house and going into college, you can't retire yet. Yeah, go have fun. You know, I'm not retiring but I am going to have location freedom. That's my ideas. I want to be able to just travel the country and what's so great with having the safety geek to is what I'm hoping to do once some I can travel the country and then meet up with different people like and maybe actually like have meetups and maybe help people in person as well. So people that are in the community. So can you tell me about a little bit about your platform and your community for some of the people that might not be aware of it of exactly what it consists of and what it does. Yeah, I know because a lot of people do get confused when they go to the website. They think I'm a consultant and I'm not. So what I, what I do is I help train workplace safety managers how to do their job and I what I'd like to say is that I teach them, I take safety managers and I turn them into safety leaders because so many people come into the field thinking you have to manage safety and it's such a bad title for us because that is not our title. We are influencers. So I teach people how the processes of how to do their job and then to actually influence the people around them and become leaders because that's what a leader is. A leader is somebody who has influence over other people for them to actually do things the right way. And hopefully then those leaders create other leaders as well. So as you see this and you get to interact with so many different people. Let me ask a kind of a strange question here when it comes to our job where we call it safety managers and so on. Do you think that that's almost like an old title at this point? Because the way that our culture is starting to shift inside of organizations, you really can't have two separate cultures, like a safety culture in an organizational culture. So as this changes, do you think that there will be a type of change your opinion? Crystal ball question, of course, in regards of how these things will move forward? I think that I would say that that's gonna like we are more enlightened about it because we are deep in the weeds with it. I don't see that enlightenment coming at the lower company levels, maybe at your larger organizations, but even at some of the larger organizations, they kind of fight it. So it takes us as influencers to change that narrative. So instead of calling it safety training, we call it training about safety topics. Or instead of safety meetings, it's a meeting that we're going to talk about our safety policies, um things like that instead. And if you if we do that enough and we have enough people that are doing it, I can see us trying to shift that narrative. I remember Like 15 years ago, the company I was working for did not, they were in the transition of an HR manager and I was like, I would rather that you create like an employee liaison um office or an employee experience office because that's more of what safety and H are doing. We are like the liaison between operations and, you know, the executives and and the employees and all of that, and not necessarily the managers of those people. So like you call us a manager, we don't manage anybody. You know, you you managed an idea is the way that I look at it. I mean, I think safety officer is much is a much better title and I do think that every corporation should have a chief safety officer and there's just not enough of them with it. So as you look at organisations now and how they're structured and depending on where you're at, you can report into operations, you can report into finance, you can report into, How do you look at that? That is true. I know it is very true. That's that's the interesting part. So which way if you were going to develop an organization or if you are giving information to a safety manager and you were saying this is the best case scenario for structure. How would you set that up? You have to report to the highest level of that company. And if you're not then you have to be able to communicate why that's important. And this is something I actually teach in my online course as well is that you have to be able to communicate the value that you have to the company and be able to express that there is a conflict of interest. You can't report to operations because you're auditing operations. So that would be you telling on your boss which is never going to happen. Uh It was your last day. Yeah. Right. Um uh Same thing you can't report to find. I actually reported to finance at one point. They didn't, all they did was like put a thumb on everything I wanted to do because they only see the numbers and they don't see all the other value to it. That makes no sense whatsoever for us to report that. Finance or legal. So like finance and legal and HR and safety, they're all equal. They're all the same department. They're all the same level of the department. None of us manage the work but we guide the work. So why would you have me reporting to another guy? That makes no sense? And safety safety. I'm sorry. This is like totally my geek spot. Safety is the only thing that is the only department out of every single one that positively affects every other department. And if we are that important then why the heck don't we have a seat in the c suite? Why don't we why aren't we invited to the executive meetings? Why are we kicked out after the 1st 15 minutes? Because we're not communicating our value. We're not saying why it's valuable for us to be there and our people don't know how to do that. They talk too much in terms of injuries instead of the profit that we actually make the company. I think you've read my mind because I think you kind of already knew where I was going to go next. You referenced earlier, the chief safety officer position inside of an organization. Most organizations do not have that. They do not have one. What is your opinion when you hear the term, when people say that they do not mind having a chief safety officer inside of the organization, but they have to earn the seat at the table similar to everybody else did. How do you feel when you hear that question? They've already earned the seat. How, by all the benefits that safety provides to that company? They've already earned that seat. So one of the other issues within our industry and this, this is the way I got into it. So I kind of feel like it's a bad thing to say that this is a problem with it, is that we promote into safety instead of saying this is a professional position and you need training before you come into it. Like we would never promote into the CFO position. We would never promote like, oh we need an HR manager, let me grab steve, who's running the warehouse, He'll be a great HR manager. So true, So true. I know, but we do it with safety all the time and that's great for us to get a lot of people in the field and it's definitely better than them not having a safety manager to begin with. But Ideally we needed to be seen as a profession and I love that there are more programs out there in college is that it's more common for people have a degree in safety now, 20 years ago, I never saw that. So in the common people even have a masters as you look at this couple of questions come up right away when you think about this now that there's a degrees that are available out there, but there's still the certifications that are out there in regards of some of some of these companies that are organizations, um they give you accreditation. Which one do you put more value in as you take a look at it and I know it's kind of an unfair question to, especially because you have a part of the accreditation, but how do you look at it now? So I have very strong feelings about certifications, I actually have a whole document about it because people ask me about it so much. Um but my thing is is the I think the only value of a certification is from a company that doesn't understand who they're hiring, they don't understand safety, so their only way for them to judge whether or not someone is competent in safety is whether or not they have that CSP or that S. P. Right? But anyone who has ever sat for the Spr CSP myself included knows that it has very little to do with the job itself. Of actually getting people to change their behaviors. Has a lot to do with Math, a lot to do with regulations, a lot to do with stuff that may never fall into your wheelhouse. So I do like to see people have a strong educational foundation though, like the programs that are out there at the colleges right now, they're teaching the regulations very well and the people come out of those programs knowing their stuff. What they don't know is how to apply it in the real world because they think I wrote this lock out tag out policy, this is an amazing policy, you're going to follow it and you're just and then they get mad because like people don't follow the policy. No they don't because you have to understand how to implement that policy in the real world. So the last time that I look, I think that I was speaking to a friend of mine and we were talking about how many different designations there are in the world of safety and we kind of came up with some number close to like 350. Um As you as you take a look at it, we always talk about the main two the CSP. In the A. S. P. And you just kind of gave the breakdown in regards of the math and some of the other things that are on there in certain companies only look because that's the only way they can say okay we know that this person's are credited right now as you see this and you're starting to see some of the schools and universities offering courses. Is there one university that you look at that you kind of hold at a higher standard than others any public university. I hold it a higher standard. Um I have hired so many safety managers that and I have reviewed hundreds of applications that when the same school appears over and over and over again and I've interviewed so many people from that same school. It just it doesn't it doesn't pop out at me. I'm not saying they're bad students because they're not they know their stuff. But there are so many applicants out there for one position. You need something that is going to make you stand out and when I have a stack of 50 resumes from one school and then three from a public university or yeah pretty much a public university. I'm like ooh what's that about? Why did they go that route? What do they know and I'm more interested in talking to those people Then I am from the 50 to 100 that are all from the same school. So as you look at this then and you kind of looking at the bigger picture when you're actually going out there and assisting with the hiring aspect. Is there something in particular that you look for besides the ah ha moment of the different school, is there something that you're looking at the application because a lot of these applications when they first come out of school, they're not going to have the experience, this kind of the way that we're gonna have, So is there something that you're looking for that? It's like, this is kind of key or integral when people are actually going about and looking, so, if I'm hiring somebody for a low level position that um whether or not they have experience doesn't matter, so let's say I'm hiring a safety specialist that's going to work with the safety manager, then what I'm looking for is what are their writing skills, like what um what kind of initiatives have they taken, you know, what does their cover letter look like? Things that are really making them stand out to be, like, they really want this to look to be more than a career, you know, they want to, they're in it for the long haul, Maybe they have something in there about, I'm really wanting to get my foot in the door and learn this and this from your company. And what I really think in applicants to that they need to do is research the company you are applying for and craft your cover letter to show that you looked at that company that you looked at what their hazards are that, you know, a little bit about them and that you're not just hitting apply. Send my Lincoln, send my linkedin profile. There you go. Hold on. I'm not supposed to use it. An arab cover letter. Is that yeah, you get my no pile almost immediately. You know, it's interesting that you bring that up because I think sometimes people do forget that where you have to look at the organization because here's the thing, as we talked today in regards of safety, people look at safety almost like religion. And let me kind of explain what I mean there where you might be a behavior based safety person or a hot person, Orleans, Orleans person and so on. Where all of a sudden if I'm a hot person and I'm going to go to a behavior based safety location and I'm not familiar with it, there might be some problems when I do that. So what do you tell people when they take the dive? Is there something, is there some key indicators they should be looking at when they go to the website? No, because they're not going to really, I don't think they're going to get much out of their, out of the website other than your, you can kinda because their websites, most businesses websites are geared towards stockholders. They're not geared towards, you know, the safety manager getting hired and then they'll be giving you the benefits. But you can look at what industry they're in, what products are making and you can know what their hazards are. But the questions as to their philosophy for safety, that should be part of your interview because you're not getting interviewed by the company, you're interviewing the company. Um you can work for anybody. You know, you can do the job, you've gone to school, you know, your stuff, you're good enough for this position. But are you sure you want to work for that company? So you should have a set of questions to kind of let you know, are are are you good enough for me? I never walk into an interview um worried whether or not I'm going to get the job. I walk into an interview wondering whether I want to work for that company and I think that confidence is probably why I get offered the job as well. So, you know, it's interesting on the mentality shift because a lot of people don't think that way in regard to when they're doing an interview, it's what I'm hoping for these certain line questions which is going to put me in the best possible light and I'm going to give you my marketing material, my resume that's going to say how great I am and everything that I do and they don't look at it is that it's really the other way around on where they're interviewing the company to see if the company is a good fit for them. You want to know what's so amazing is when you actually approach it that way the interviewer notices the shift in the mindset and they see you as having an interest in them more so than any other applicant that sat in front of them, interesting. I like your approach there for sure. So as you take you take a look at this and I want to ask you in particular when you take a look at these different variations of safety that are out there, Is there one in particular that you follow? I would have to say behavior based safety, but I really just follow what has worked for me. So when I started in safety, when I was working for that coop and I had that mentor, she taught me to be the safety police, she taught me that you have to like come down with a hammer and you got to watch people and you got to check the security cameras. You have to do all that, right? So that was where I was coming from. And then when I became the director and we had a new acquisition, I walked in like a freaking bull in a china shop and I was like, you're doing all this wrong and all of that, right? And we all know how that turned out. So, um, I totally lost trust in that acquisition. They never followed a single safety rule. We're talking 100 year old company that literally could have had an ammonia leak at any moment. And because they wouldn't, they, I lost trust they wouldn't listen to me. So the next acquisition, I was like, I can't, how am I going to do this differently? Right? What can I do differently? So the next time I walked in with being like, I don't know your business. So can you please tell me about your business? And I started talking to employees more like, hey, you know, I don't know how to do your job. Show me the best way to do your job. Well, I see this as a hazard. Tell me why you don't see it as a hazard. And I really started this approach of involving employees in every aspect. And I did and I perfected it over acquisition, over acquisition over acquisition. So technically it's a behavior based safety program because I believe in positive reinforcement. Um, but and I focus on behaviors more than anything else. But when I do my accident investigations or when I do a hazard, my first approach is what can we as a company do differently to make sure that this never happens again or what can we as a company do to make sure that this hazard is not present? So I always look to the company first, which is more of a hot model instead of looking at, well, the employees just not following the rules. I go well why isn't the employee following the rules? Have we set them up for success? You know, so it's kind of a combination. So I just say I do what works for me and I think it comes down to um my love of psychology as well, which is why I have my degree in psychology. Uh Just a little. I love I noticed that too. I like. Yes. Yes totally. Io um industrial organization, if nobody knows what that means. But Yeah when I went to get my degree so that I could get my certification, I was like I can either go get my degree in safety which I've been doing for at that point I think 15 years or I can learn something new which is psychology and I can strengthen those skills. So I think it's a really good mesh together. So so how many times were you presenting your actual degree to someone and they thought that you were trying to apply for a charge up? I'm just curious. Never because I actually lucky that never happened to me. No, I did not finish my degree until after I started the safety geek good was already on my own. I was already on my path to get my degree in my certification just because I was getting a lot of calls from headhunters and the moment they heard that I never finished my degree, they were like, I can't talk to you anymore. I mean this was happening probably monthly and I was like, ok, I better go get that degree and certification because I really don't care about letters after my name. But a lot of other people do you see, it's interesting that you say that because I think that it's kind of funny when you see names on social media that have the letters way longer than their name will ever be and how important that is. And people put a value to it. And I mean, I'm almost hypocritical by saying it because I put the letters because I put the letters behind mine. So it's kind of rough for me to say that sometimes. But I also have other certifications, but I have never went on going, here's 20 deep. Um, and let's kind of go from there. Especially when I have a three letter names. Yeah, Exactly, Exactly. Yeah. I had a friend of mine that he had, Oh my God, I have four different ones after his name. And I'm like, seriously, just put the highest level that everybody is expecting. Just put that one there by the PhD, that my CSP would be dropped, and I would have PhD. And that was well, I I kept on listening, the highest one that I had until I got the PhD. And then I said, ok, dropping that, I think that's going to be the highest point, because I definitely did not, but I didn't want to put D R. Because I didn't want to be known as dr J. There's another great guy that actually has that and let him keep that title, you know? So funny you say that was a DJ when I was growing up, Dr J. Well, Dr J was a dentist. Oh, interesting. He DJs as well. Dr J d m d is probably what, how he actually ended up doing it. So re if people want to know more about what you have going on work, and they go out to find out more information so you can go to the safety geek dot com, make sure you put the because somebody took the darn safety geek from and I keep trying to get it back. So make sure you go to the safety geek dot com and when you're over there, you can see a link to our new community, which I just launched I think two or three weeks ago at community dot the safety gate dot com. So it's totally off of social media and we're just building a nice little community over there of safety professionals. And um I also have a ton of free resources, so check it out. I truly appreciate you actually coming onto the show and at any point, if you ever want to come back, please don't hesitate. Don't wait 18 months for sure. Before we get back to this again, definitely thank you so much. Day Once more of the J ALLen go to 60 FM dot com. The views and opinions expressed on this
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[00:42:21] spk_0: Examples of analysis
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[00:42:51] spk_0: jay Allen.
Brye has been a dedicated Safety Professional for 20 years and has trained over 130 Safety Managers. Her passion is coaching and training safety managers, who struggle to get support for their program, effective strategies and techniques to change their company's culture and become safety leaders. The Safety Geek is an online resource featuring an active community, articles, blog posts, templates, and training focusing on management support, the psychology of safety and creating a safety culture.
Hear it all today on The Jay Allen Show!
The transcript is not perfect.
[00:00:02] spk_0: This is this show is brought to you by safety FM. Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the J ALLen show. Hopefully everything is good and grand inside of your neck of the woods. Well, I have to tell you it's been an interesting summer so far, really enjoying the time being able to meet some new people digitally and in Persian and so on. So I have to tell you what is going on here today During the recent event at Safety Day 2021. I was actually on the air, you know, doing the stuff that we do here at safety FM and I took a look around and from a distance, I saw someone that I had seen on social media several times over. I paused what I was doing in regard to the live event, ran to her and said, listen, I don't know how we need to work this out, but I would definitely love to have you on the show. I knew it wasn't gonna be at that particular moment in time that would be able to do it. But we knew that it would be occurring at some point in the future and this is the point in the future, which will now be our past, that what we're talking about here today. So let me tell you about bryce sergeant. Most of us though, know her as the safety geek and I mean that with as much respect as possible, keep that in mind too. Brian has been a dedicated safety professional for over 20 years and has trained over 130 safety managers, her passion and coaching and training safety managers who struggle to get support for their program, effective strategies and techniques to change their company's culture and become safety leaders. The safety is an online resource featuring an active community articles, blog post templates and training focusing on management support and the psychology of safety in creating a safety culture. Today is my pleasure to sit down and speak to rice sergeant here on the J ALLen show show is streaming now on safety FM dot life. Sorry, sorry that this took so long to happen because I was thinking about this actually before I contacted you and I was like, we had a conversation, I want to say it was like a year and a half ago. Yeah, yeah, I think it was now. It is june so yeah, it happened like in january I think of a year ago. So yeah, I was thinking and I was like, it was kind of like a pre, but nothing ever happened and I was like, man, that was a lost opportunity. So I'm glad that we're finally able to get together today. Well, thanks to you. Thanks to you. I've just been like so busy and I, and I forget like reaching out into the community is so important. It's like I'm in my little bubble and I need to sometimes break out of my bubble, which is what I teach, which is kind of funny. Well it's interesting that you call your bubble little because that isn't the kind of the perception that I'm seeing at least on my end because we see you everywhere. And I mean that in a good way, You post a lot of information in your everywhere, which is kind of where we started. Um, we were at safety day 2021. I almost said the wrong year there. Um, and I ran into you and I definitely did not want to miss the opportunity. So I ran to you. I stopped what I was doing cause I want to make sure that I got to you and say, Hey, let's try to do this together. So the funny part about this is I wanted to have a conversation, but I wanted to be everything that you have going on because I'm so intrigued by your career and the things that you have going on that of course I I have to ask the most simplest question and of course the most difficult to win all at the same time. How in the heck did you get involved in this world of safety? Yeah. So I fell into my lap. I was actually doing safety before I knew that I was doing safety. So um I was a hotel manager for a holiday in, Oh, you want name brand? You're one of the brave ones most people like for Brandon, they never say it. So I'm glad you said it. No holiday in and as part of managing a hotel you have to manage expenses. And I was really, we're talking 26 years ago and I am only 29. So I was like three years old at the time. So I was very, very green and I didn't know what I was doing and the insurance company was coming to renew and they said you know we have a risk department, why don't we have them come out and help you? And I was like sure you know awesome. So I started working with the risk department and creating safety policies and training and um ergonomics and like investing, investigating accidents and doing trend analysis. I didn't know I was doing a safety program. So I left the hospitality industry mainly because if you've ever worked in hospitality it is literally eight days a week, 24 hours a day. And I was starting a family. So I left the hospitality industry and I said you know what, I want to get a job where I'm not managing anybody, I just want a cubicle and that is it. So I found this job at the local um I thought it was a local coop. It ended up being like one of the largest co ops in the country like larger than ocean spray. And I was working in their accounting department and they were getting sued by the E. P. A. And they needed some help. Yeah they need some help preparing for the lawsuit for the E. P. A. And I was like sure I got time I'll help. And that was how I ended up in safety because they had a brand new safety director and basically I started working in their department. I got hired with them like june or july and on september 11th this is how this is how I remember september 11th in my mind, I was preparing for the E. P. A lawsuit and getting my binders ready to present in court. So like bye bye. I started them in june and by september I was working in safety so I knew nothing about it at the time. But what was so crazy is that they were mainly a farming transportation feed, male type facility. And as I started working and I was like oh my gosh, this is what I did at the hotel. Let me ask that real quick. So how does the company say okay we're going to go ahead and go go there with you especially with not having a background in safety. So how were you able to I guess go through the conversation where they can rely on you in doing this. They hired me when I moved from the accounting department into the safety department, I was just a clerk. So I started out as a clerk and the director of safety. So we had a director of safety and we had to administrators in there and I was one of the administrators. Um she just took me under her wing and saw that I guess like I could learn this stuff and really it just comes natural to me anyway because I'm like I'm a safety geek through and through like I was a safety geek when I was like 10 years old. So it was, it just came naturally to me and I just worked my way up and within a couple of years I was the director of safety for that coop because she moved on to operations. Very fantastic. Yeah. So that's the journey start and from everything that we could find. Oh my, did you take a deep dive inside of this stuff? You have went from National Safety Council training to be CSP training to the University of Central florida. I mean you've been doing a little bit of everything in regards of becoming well known within the industry, number one, but also getting everything that you would need to be accredited to, for people to really realize that you have everything going on and you have one of those things that I love that a lot of people don't talk about Smith system. Oh, I love this. I'll tell you, my son got a job, my son is 27 now, but he got a job working for Children 29. How does that work? I know, I know, crazy. I'm, but he got a job working for Triple A and they put him through smith system training and I was so freaking excited about it, I was like, yes, all good kids love milk. It's kind of funny because I remember going to a smith system of training many, many years ago, I actually went to their facility in Arlington texas. Now I have to tell you that the room that's that, that they actually train you and it's a little bit tortuous, I have to admit, here it is a giant glass window where you get to see six flags and where the new texas stadium is and I'm like, how is this going to be accommodating to actually be inside of a classroom? So it's always kind of like how did you end up going into the smith system, how did you decide that that was going to be something you were interested in? So when I was yeah when I was the director at the trucking company, you know safety can only take you so far like regulations and everything can only take you so far. I like to call that like the low hanging fruit. So when I started with the co op and it was mainly trucking, we have 550 drivers. Um we got rid of all the low hanging fruit just by following regulations, right? But the regulations are just a C grade. So once you really want to start diving deep in your safety program and reducing costs and stopping accidents you gotta get more intensive. So I was like I was already looking into the Bendix system and this was like way before it became like my car has it now and I this was before it was even available there and like lane change warning and all of that. I was like that's the engineering part, let's how can we get better, how can we train our drivers better. So to me the smith system with like the best system out there. It was just I agree, I agree and I love how like like at the same time I also tested National Safety Council's defensive driving program which you do online and it's good it's a good online course but when you're teaching driving skills you need to be out there on the road. And um that's what smith system teaches you. And I had I was lucky enough to have a team of driver trainers, I had six driver trainers, so I got all of them certified as miss system trainers as well. And they would not only train my new drivers on it, they also trained um they did the retraining on all of my current drivers and any like near miss, any accident, anything like that. They would then jump out there and then retrain them again. So we have brought our accident rate down below it too, they, like when I started there we were literally spending millions like $3 million dollars a year on claims and when I left there I think it was like 200,000 at the most. Did you ask for a percentage of the cut? I'm just asking 100 like every year. I don't understand why we do not get kickbacks on the insurance savings. I mean it's it's an interesting question. I agree with you 100% there and I say that sarcastically but not sarcastically all at the same time because it's interesting to see on how some of the changes actually do occur, especially if you're saying that you had a fleet size of 550 drivers inside of there, especially if you're actually doing that kind of savings. It's always interesting on how the outcome works. So as you do this change and you're saving the company, that kind of money, what are they telling you? Are they, are they all of a sudden saying you can expand your wings a little bit more and do some other things inside of the organization or what are they saying? Yeah, yeah. Once once you, once you start seeing those results, they do kind of let you then like, no, we trust bry we know that she can do her stuff. Um and then they let you do more and more, did you did you like that aspect of it or were you kind of questioning about? Okay, now they're giving me more, more and more things on my plate. Well, I'm a bit of a control freak and that's actually a problem of mine, so I love to get more and more, but then I end up having so much on my plate that I'm just like, oh my gosh, I'm stressed out. Which is why j it took 18 months for us to get on the phone together. So hold on, you should have sent me the invite is what you're saying, that I totally shouldn't. I am I just have a hard time saying no, a lot of times, and a lot of times when I see that things can be changed or things can be fixed. Like, a great example is it's working for this company where, you know, I'm like, why aren't we doing flu shots or why aren't we doing a wellness program? If we had a wellness program, it would help my strain and sprain injuries and technically that's an HR job, but HR never stepped up to the plate. But you know, if I did it, I did get some benefit out of it. So yeah, let's do a wellness program. Let's do flu shots. Let's do all that stuff. Now. You do realize that that's the only company you haven't named by name. We'll leave it at that. We don't. No, no, no, no, I'm just joking. I was joking. You go through these different stages of your career and you're doing the things that you're doing. So at what moment do you go? Okay. I have helped out these different industries. I've enjoyed the private sector for, for a period of time. Now it's time to go out on my own. And the safety geek, I won't say the safety Geek was born, especially after you said that you've been a safety geek since you were 10, but all of a sudden the name and the branding is open out to the world. So what gives you the idea and why do you go ahead and decided to take the dive at this time? Because I'm going to be an empty nester. Okay, so my kids are growing up within a year, they're both going to be gone to college and I'm going to have my life back to myself and I can do whatever I want. Don't listen to these kids, Don't listen to the kids in regards to hearing this, that's not what she meant. Her life is changing. I started examining going like what kind of job do I want and what do I really like to do and what do I really like to do? I love technology, I love like website design, I love um getting my hands in there with like, you know, coding and all of that. But what I also love is talking to safety manager. So my last corporate job with Cisco, I was actually training all of their safety managers. So my calendar was full every week with phone calls where all I got to do is talk to safety managers. And I was like, how can I combine those two? So I basically took the training that I was doing for Cisco, which at the time I called it the safety boot camp and I said, how can I move that and transition that into an online platform? So that's basically where safety he came from and that's where safety management academy came from. So as you decide to do this, why are you willing to take the risk on yourself? Because most people when they have a corporate position, especially the way that you just worded that will not take that kind of risk because, well let's say slightly guaranteed paycheck to all of a sudden, you only get what you kill out there now when you're hunting. So why did you decide to take this risk? Right at that moment? To be honest with you, I didn't have a choice. Good reason. Cisco at that time had gone through three layoffs, They've now gone through four and I was part of the third lay off for the department and at the time that they laid me off, I was actually scheduled to have knee replacement surgery. Um, so I literally couldn't walk at the time that they laid me off. So I was like, okay, what can I do? Because I'm going to have nine months before I can walk. Let me give this idea a try. And I have had so much fun building the safety geek that now it is what 2.5 years later and I'm still doing it well. The interesting part is that you did the coursework, you said you like coding, which I like the nerd talk there for sure, or the geek talk for there for sure. So when you decided to do this, all of a sudden you introduce a podcast at the same time to where you're going out there and you're giving your messaging, um I've seen your website change from a little bit in regards from when you first launched, where you're at now. So as you're looking at this and you say, let's do a podcast, of course this before right now, as we're going through the pandemic with the slew of podcasts that have come out in the side of the world. But when you start to decide, hey, I'm going to give a podcast and give out this information. What was the decision behind that? Well, I had a podcast 10 years ago, So that was just given and I'm a podcast junkie. Okay. It's interesting because when you say that to people in regards that you did a podcast 10 years ago, people were going, there was podcast 10 years ago. You don't, people don't realize that they were actually out in the late 90s. This is kind of the fun part. So as your podcast junkie and you did a podcast 10 years ago. What was it about back then? If you tell me safety stuff, I'm really gonna freak out for a moment. I bet you can't even guess what it was about. Well, I don't know. Um, you said hospitality and driving earlier. You said something about 2001. Um crouching. Let's go with that. You said I can't take a guess. So close. You are so close. It was a quilting podcast. Yeah, we were extremely close. So I had at that time 10 years ago I was actually building an online website for um quilters for them to track their projects. And then I had a quilting podcast and all of that. And then an opportunity at Cisco came along and that just seemed like a better opportunity at the time. So like I was coding that website but I was like no okay I'm going to take the opportunity with Cisco. So I gave up on that dream 10 years ago. So I guess like turning it around. I probably could have started a quilting podcast again. But I just wanted sometimes you don't want to monetize your hobbies, but if you can find work that you love, which is what I do. I was like, let me let me make a business out of that instead. So as you take the dive into this business that you love all of a sudden there's been some turns and twists and I mean this in the best of ways. So recently I want to say it wasn't, it was a few weeks ago at this point you were featured on the Spring Leaders magazine for the V. P. P. A. How did this come about? I would love to say that I had a hand in it but I did not. It's like so like it's just like reaching out to you is on my list of things to do, re counter no serious. But reaching out to all the magazines was on my list of things to do to. And then B. P. P. P. A. Reached out to me and they said, hey, we've been watching you and we really like what you're doing, would you consider writing an article for us? And I was like, yeah, sure. I'm, I am. I used to be an S. G. With OSHA and I'm a VP. P specialist. So I love V. P. P. I love it way more than I. So and all of that. So I was like, yes, definitely. I never even miss your conference unless I have to. So they said, we want to hear your story and like what, what drove you into safety. Actually what you just asked me what drove me into safety and what led me to the safety geek. So I was like, sure. So I wrote the article and lucky enough because I have an online business, I knew that having photos available of me was helpful. So she's like, you can you can submit photos, you you um if you want, you know, and I was like, yeah, that's fine. Here's a couple that you can use. It's just my normal, you know, branding photos and next thing I know they put me on the cover, so I'm super grateful to them, definitely humbled. Um and they just said how much they love my article. So which so here's so here's the interesting part. So congratulations number one for making it on there. And then as you're taking a look at this and this has changed. If you look back five years ago, would you expected this to happen? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. So how do you look at it? Do you look that it was great timing and good content or how do you look at how this occurred for you? Especially because they reached out to you? No pressure. Right. You know what's so funny is that I always set goals for myself of like really big goals and I have had this like 10 year goal that I had reached right at 10 years and I was like, what is my next 10 year goal going to be? And I was playing around with the idea of a keynote speaker at like the V. P. P. P. A conference or something like that. And I never really solidified it. So I could say it was kind of in the background of my mind. But then part of me was like, do I really want to do all that work? I'm getting very close to retirement. Wait a minute. No, no, no, no. If the cancer leaving the house and going into college, you can't retire yet. Yeah, go have fun. You know, I'm not retiring but I am going to have location freedom. That's my ideas. I want to be able to just travel the country and what's so great with having the safety geek to is what I'm hoping to do once some I can travel the country and then meet up with different people like and maybe actually like have meetups and maybe help people in person as well. So people that are in the community. So can you tell me about a little bit about your platform and your community for some of the people that might not be aware of it of exactly what it consists of and what it does. Yeah, I know because a lot of people do get confused when they go to the website. They think I'm a consultant and I'm not. So what I, what I do is I help train workplace safety managers how to do their job and I what I'd like to say is that I teach them, I take safety managers and I turn them into safety leaders because so many people come into the field thinking you have to manage safety and it's such a bad title for us because that is not our title. We are influencers. So I teach people how the processes of how to do their job and then to actually influence the people around them and become leaders because that's what a leader is. A leader is somebody who has influence over other people for them to actually do things the right way. And hopefully then those leaders create other leaders as well. So as you see this and you get to interact with so many different people. Let me ask a kind of a strange question here when it comes to our job where we call it safety managers and so on. Do you think that that's almost like an old title at this point? Because the way that our culture is starting to shift inside of organizations, you really can't have two separate cultures, like a safety culture in an organizational culture. So as this changes, do you think that there will be a type of change your opinion? Crystal ball question, of course, in regards of how these things will move forward? I think that I would say that that's gonna like we are more enlightened about it because we are deep in the weeds with it. I don't see that enlightenment coming at the lower company levels, maybe at your larger organizations, but even at some of the larger organizations, they kind of fight it. So it takes us as influencers to change that narrative. So instead of calling it safety training, we call it training about safety topics. Or instead of safety meetings, it's a meeting that we're going to talk about our safety policies, um things like that instead. And if you if we do that enough and we have enough people that are doing it, I can see us trying to shift that narrative. I remember Like 15 years ago, the company I was working for did not, they were in the transition of an HR manager and I was like, I would rather that you create like an employee liaison um office or an employee experience office because that's more of what safety and H are doing. We are like the liaison between operations and, you know, the executives and and the employees and all of that, and not necessarily the managers of those people. So like you call us a manager, we don't manage anybody. You know, you you managed an idea is the way that I look at it. I mean, I think safety officer is much is a much better title and I do think that every corporation should have a chief safety officer and there's just not enough of them with it. So as you look at organisations now and how they're structured and depending on where you're at, you can report into operations, you can report into finance, you can report into, How do you look at that? That is true. I know it is very true. That's that's the interesting part. So which way if you were going to develop an organization or if you are giving information to a safety manager and you were saying this is the best case scenario for structure. How would you set that up? You have to report to the highest level of that company. And if you're not then you have to be able to communicate why that's important. And this is something I actually teach in my online course as well is that you have to be able to communicate the value that you have to the company and be able to express that there is a conflict of interest. You can't report to operations because you're auditing operations. So that would be you telling on your boss which is never going to happen. Uh It was your last day. Yeah. Right. Um uh Same thing you can't report to find. I actually reported to finance at one point. They didn't, all they did was like put a thumb on everything I wanted to do because they only see the numbers and they don't see all the other value to it. That makes no sense whatsoever for us to report that. Finance or legal. So like finance and legal and HR and safety, they're all equal. They're all the same department. They're all the same level of the department. None of us manage the work but we guide the work. So why would you have me reporting to another guy? That makes no sense? And safety safety. I'm sorry. This is like totally my geek spot. Safety is the only thing that is the only department out of every single one that positively affects every other department. And if we are that important then why the heck don't we have a seat in the c suite? Why don't we why aren't we invited to the executive meetings? Why are we kicked out after the 1st 15 minutes? Because we're not communicating our value. We're not saying why it's valuable for us to be there and our people don't know how to do that. They talk too much in terms of injuries instead of the profit that we actually make the company. I think you've read my mind because I think you kind of already knew where I was going to go next. You referenced earlier, the chief safety officer position inside of an organization. Most organizations do not have that. They do not have one. What is your opinion when you hear the term, when people say that they do not mind having a chief safety officer inside of the organization, but they have to earn the seat at the table similar to everybody else did. How do you feel when you hear that question? They've already earned the seat. How, by all the benefits that safety provides to that company? They've already earned that seat. So one of the other issues within our industry and this, this is the way I got into it. So I kind of feel like it's a bad thing to say that this is a problem with it, is that we promote into safety instead of saying this is a professional position and you need training before you come into it. Like we would never promote into the CFO position. We would never promote like, oh we need an HR manager, let me grab steve, who's running the warehouse, He'll be a great HR manager. So true, So true. I know, but we do it with safety all the time and that's great for us to get a lot of people in the field and it's definitely better than them not having a safety manager to begin with. But Ideally we needed to be seen as a profession and I love that there are more programs out there in college is that it's more common for people have a degree in safety now, 20 years ago, I never saw that. So in the common people even have a masters as you look at this couple of questions come up right away when you think about this now that there's a degrees that are available out there, but there's still the certifications that are out there in regards of some of some of these companies that are organizations, um they give you accreditation. Which one do you put more value in as you take a look at it and I know it's kind of an unfair question to, especially because you have a part of the accreditation, but how do you look at it now? So I have very strong feelings about certifications, I actually have a whole document about it because people ask me about it so much. Um but my thing is is the I think the only value of a certification is from a company that doesn't understand who they're hiring, they don't understand safety, so their only way for them to judge whether or not someone is competent in safety is whether or not they have that CSP or that S. P. Right? But anyone who has ever sat for the Spr CSP myself included knows that it has very little to do with the job itself. Of actually getting people to change their behaviors. Has a lot to do with Math, a lot to do with regulations, a lot to do with stuff that may never fall into your wheelhouse. So I do like to see people have a strong educational foundation though, like the programs that are out there at the colleges right now, they're teaching the regulations very well and the people come out of those programs knowing their stuff. What they don't know is how to apply it in the real world because they think I wrote this lock out tag out policy, this is an amazing policy, you're going to follow it and you're just and then they get mad because like people don't follow the policy. No they don't because you have to understand how to implement that policy in the real world. So the last time that I look, I think that I was speaking to a friend of mine and we were talking about how many different designations there are in the world of safety and we kind of came up with some number close to like 350. Um As you as you take a look at it, we always talk about the main two the CSP. In the A. S. P. And you just kind of gave the breakdown in regards of the math and some of the other things that are on there in certain companies only look because that's the only way they can say okay we know that this person's are credited right now as you see this and you're starting to see some of the schools and universities offering courses. Is there one university that you look at that you kind of hold at a higher standard than others any public university. I hold it a higher standard. Um I have hired so many safety managers that and I have reviewed hundreds of applications that when the same school appears over and over and over again and I've interviewed so many people from that same school. It just it doesn't it doesn't pop out at me. I'm not saying they're bad students because they're not they know their stuff. But there are so many applicants out there for one position. You need something that is going to make you stand out and when I have a stack of 50 resumes from one school and then three from a public university or yeah pretty much a public university. I'm like ooh what's that about? Why did they go that route? What do they know and I'm more interested in talking to those people Then I am from the 50 to 100 that are all from the same school. So as you look at this then and you kind of looking at the bigger picture when you're actually going out there and assisting with the hiring aspect. Is there something in particular that you look for besides the ah ha moment of the different school, is there something that you're looking at the application because a lot of these applications when they first come out of school, they're not going to have the experience, this kind of the way that we're gonna have, So is there something that you're looking for that? It's like, this is kind of key or integral when people are actually going about and looking, so, if I'm hiring somebody for a low level position that um whether or not they have experience doesn't matter, so let's say I'm hiring a safety specialist that's going to work with the safety manager, then what I'm looking for is what are their writing skills, like what um what kind of initiatives have they taken, you know, what does their cover letter look like? Things that are really making them stand out to be, like, they really want this to look to be more than a career, you know, they want to, they're in it for the long haul, Maybe they have something in there about, I'm really wanting to get my foot in the door and learn this and this from your company. And what I really think in applicants to that they need to do is research the company you are applying for and craft your cover letter to show that you looked at that company that you looked at what their hazards are that, you know, a little bit about them and that you're not just hitting apply. Send my Lincoln, send my linkedin profile. There you go. Hold on. I'm not supposed to use it. An arab cover letter. Is that yeah, you get my no pile almost immediately. You know, it's interesting that you bring that up because I think sometimes people do forget that where you have to look at the organization because here's the thing, as we talked today in regards of safety, people look at safety almost like religion. And let me kind of explain what I mean there where you might be a behavior based safety person or a hot person, Orleans, Orleans person and so on. Where all of a sudden if I'm a hot person and I'm going to go to a behavior based safety location and I'm not familiar with it, there might be some problems when I do that. So what do you tell people when they take the dive? Is there something, is there some key indicators they should be looking at when they go to the website? No, because they're not going to really, I don't think they're going to get much out of their, out of the website other than your, you can kinda because their websites, most businesses websites are geared towards stockholders. They're not geared towards, you know, the safety manager getting hired and then they'll be giving you the benefits. But you can look at what industry they're in, what products are making and you can know what their hazards are. But the questions as to their philosophy for safety, that should be part of your interview because you're not getting interviewed by the company, you're interviewing the company. Um you can work for anybody. You know, you can do the job, you've gone to school, you know, your stuff, you're good enough for this position. But are you sure you want to work for that company? So you should have a set of questions to kind of let you know, are are are you good enough for me? I never walk into an interview um worried whether or not I'm going to get the job. I walk into an interview wondering whether I want to work for that company and I think that confidence is probably why I get offered the job as well. So, you know, it's interesting on the mentality shift because a lot of people don't think that way in regard to when they're doing an interview, it's what I'm hoping for these certain line questions which is going to put me in the best possible light and I'm going to give you my marketing material, my resume that's going to say how great I am and everything that I do and they don't look at it is that it's really the other way around on where they're interviewing the company to see if the company is a good fit for them. You want to know what's so amazing is when you actually approach it that way the interviewer notices the shift in the mindset and they see you as having an interest in them more so than any other applicant that sat in front of them, interesting. I like your approach there for sure. So as you take you take a look at this and I want to ask you in particular when you take a look at these different variations of safety that are out there, Is there one in particular that you follow? I would have to say behavior based safety, but I really just follow what has worked for me. So when I started in safety, when I was working for that coop and I had that mentor, she taught me to be the safety police, she taught me that you have to like come down with a hammer and you got to watch people and you got to check the security cameras. You have to do all that, right? So that was where I was coming from. And then when I became the director and we had a new acquisition, I walked in like a freaking bull in a china shop and I was like, you're doing all this wrong and all of that, right? And we all know how that turned out. So, um, I totally lost trust in that acquisition. They never followed a single safety rule. We're talking 100 year old company that literally could have had an ammonia leak at any moment. And because they wouldn't, they, I lost trust they wouldn't listen to me. So the next acquisition, I was like, I can't, how am I going to do this differently? Right? What can I do differently? So the next time I walked in with being like, I don't know your business. So can you please tell me about your business? And I started talking to employees more like, hey, you know, I don't know how to do your job. Show me the best way to do your job. Well, I see this as a hazard. Tell me why you don't see it as a hazard. And I really started this approach of involving employees in every aspect. And I did and I perfected it over acquisition, over acquisition over acquisition. So technically it's a behavior based safety program because I believe in positive reinforcement. Um, but and I focus on behaviors more than anything else. But when I do my accident investigations or when I do a hazard, my first approach is what can we as a company do differently to make sure that this never happens again or what can we as a company do to make sure that this hazard is not present? So I always look to the company first, which is more of a hot model instead of looking at, well, the employees just not following the rules. I go well why isn't the employee following the rules? Have we set them up for success? You know, so it's kind of a combination. So I just say I do what works for me and I think it comes down to um my love of psychology as well, which is why I have my degree in psychology. Uh Just a little. I love I noticed that too. I like. Yes. Yes totally. Io um industrial organization, if nobody knows what that means. But Yeah when I went to get my degree so that I could get my certification, I was like I can either go get my degree in safety which I've been doing for at that point I think 15 years or I can learn something new which is psychology and I can strengthen those skills. So I think it's a really good mesh together. So so how many times were you presenting your actual degree to someone and they thought that you were trying to apply for a charge up? I'm just curious. Never because I actually lucky that never happened to me. No, I did not finish my degree until after I started the safety geek good was already on my own. I was already on my path to get my degree in my certification just because I was getting a lot of calls from headhunters and the moment they heard that I never finished my degree, they were like, I can't talk to you anymore. I mean this was happening probably monthly and I was like, ok, I better go get that degree and certification because I really don't care about letters after my name. But a lot of other people do you see, it's interesting that you say that because I think that it's kind of funny when you see names on social media that have the letters way longer than their name will ever be and how important that is. And people put a value to it. And I mean, I'm almost hypocritical by saying it because I put the letters because I put the letters behind mine. So it's kind of rough for me to say that sometimes. But I also have other certifications, but I have never went on going, here's 20 deep. Um, and let's kind of go from there. Especially when I have a three letter names. Yeah, Exactly, Exactly. Yeah. I had a friend of mine that he had, Oh my God, I have four different ones after his name. And I'm like, seriously, just put the highest level that everybody is expecting. Just put that one there by the PhD, that my CSP would be dropped, and I would have PhD. And that was well, I I kept on listening, the highest one that I had until I got the PhD. And then I said, ok, dropping that, I think that's going to be the highest point, because I definitely did not, but I didn't want to put D R. Because I didn't want to be known as dr J. There's another great guy that actually has that and let him keep that title, you know? So funny you say that was a DJ when I was growing up, Dr J. Well, Dr J was a dentist. Oh, interesting. He DJs as well. Dr J d m d is probably what, how he actually ended up doing it. So re if people want to know more about what you have going on work, and they go out to find out more information so you can go to the safety geek dot com, make sure you put the because somebody took the darn safety geek from and I keep trying to get it back. So make sure you go to the safety geek dot com and when you're over there, you can see a link to our new community, which I just launched I think two or three weeks ago at community dot the safety gate dot com. So it's totally off of social media and we're just building a nice little community over there of safety professionals. And um I also have a ton of free resources, so check it out. I truly appreciate you actually coming onto the show and at any point, if you ever want to come back, please don't hesitate. Don't wait 18 months for sure. Before we get back to this again, definitely thank you so much. Day Once more of the J ALLen go to 60 FM dot com. The views and opinions expressed on this
[00:42:14] spk_1: podcast are those of
[00:42:16] spk_0: the host in its guests and do not
[00:42:17] spk_1: necessarily reflect
[00:42:19] spk_0: the official policy or
[00:42:20] spk_1: position of the company.
[00:42:21] spk_0: Examples of analysis
[00:42:22] spk_1: discussed within this podcast
[00:42:24] spk_0: are only examples. It should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available as they are based only on very limited and dated open source information, assumptions made within this analysis are not
[00:42:35] spk_1: reflective of the position of the
[00:42:36] spk_0: company. No part of this podcast may be reproduced stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means mechanical, electronic recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the
[00:42:50] spk_1: creator of the podcast,
[00:42:51] spk_0: jay Allen.
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