Show Notes
Today on The Jay Allen Show, Regina McMichael returns. During the conversation Regina discusses what has occurred with her over the last year, how training can be fun even using virtual platforms. What improvements she has seen in learning and what she is going to be doing next.
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[00:00:03] spk_0: this show is brought to you by Safety FM. Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the J. Allen Show. You know how it is. It's another Tuesday and we are here spending some time together and talking about what is going on inside of the world of safety. Anyway, it's a couple of things before we get started, too deep into this whole thing right now. We have a contest going on at safety FM dot com, four slash contest. All you have to do is go over there and take a look at what is going on. The contest consists of the following 21 hour sessions with yours truly, where we get to discuss a little bit about everything, whatever you want to discuss. Also, before I forget, our safety reconfigured class is back by popular demand. So we'll be doing that on March the 31st at 11 a.m. Eastern standard time. So if you want to join us for that, you can go to safety FM dot io for some more information anyway, So let's get started right now and what's going on today. Today we have the return of Regina McMichael. Yeah, she comes back and we're gonna sit down and talk about some things that are going on inside of the industry. Last time she was here, she told us the story and how she got involved inside of the world of safety. Just in case you're not familiar with Regina, she is the president of the Learning Factory, Incorporated, the safety, passion driven education and training company she has over 30 years experience in safety and health, education, training, communication and leadership. But let's get all that to the side. And let's get this conversation started right now. What? The safety training ninja herself. Where? Gina McMichael, right now on the J. Allen Show. The show is streaming now on safety FM dot Life We've spoken before, but I have to ask, with you going through everything that's going on right now, how has your life changed over the last year? Um gosh, I don't think we have enough time to cover all that. We can always make it, though. Yeah, that's true. You get about because interesting stuff. Um, you know, it's funny. I was I was literally four days from doing a joint launch with another consultant with with Loreal of the Americas. Four days from a multi country, multi year, multi effort live delivery. And on February 28th of last year, um, Loreal stopped all international travel and we were going to start delivering on March 2nd. So it was like or, you know, whatever close enough. And, uh, it was it was a really tough choice for them because they were one of the first companies to make that global choice. And it was really funny, because it's like, OK, just, you know, we're gonna stop this and we've been building it for years and we're about, I mean literally boxes of stuff taken on airplanes and the whole thing. And so, uh, it's funny because it's so J harf with with Loreal and then Dan Snyder with safety mentor. We've been working on this project, and, uh, immediately Loreal goes into response to covid and starts doing their thing. And I basically sat around for months. The only the only outside customer action I had was people saying, Yeah, it's canceled or we're going virtual. How do we do that? And so I was just kind of filling in the pieces, and I really kind of like lost contact with the world I lost, how to keep track of calendars and and and do stuff and, like bills were coming in. And I'm like, Oh, God, mail mail. You should look at that. And so I went, had a really long downtime, and then Loreal was ready to start crying. Come back up. And when they first talked about going virtual, I was like, No, I'm like, I don't want to do it. We've done too much work. It's It's really gonna be, you know, great live and face to face and all this. And then another two months passed and I go, Yes, it's not going to get better. So So yeah, so we flipped it. And I'll tell you, it took us more time to flip the program to a good virtual program. Not just a virtual program, but a good one took us more time and effort to flip it than it did to create the original product, because there's but there's a couple of things going on there, too. Besides, so this major things occurring, but not so long prior to that, you had made a pretty big move to you had moved from a different state moving into a totally new state. Yes, Yes, yes. And And And that part, it was the best thing that could've happened to me for covid because, you know, I moved into the floor. I know, right? Yeah, no state tax. And And, Yeah, it really turned out to be a great thing, because if I had been where I was before with Covid, I would have really become super alienated. But my best friend's kind of lived next door to me right now. And so we we share a bubble, and I haven't got a puppy. So, uh, which they'll watch if I ever get back on the road again. Yes. Well, let me ask there because you did reference something and I don't and I don't want to get sidetracked. It is important that of course, you're close to to somebody that's that important to your friends. But you said something that's very crucial. There is a huge difference there between having a class, a piece of content that's available virtual to a good or a great piece of contact. And being is this is what you do and you train and you talk about the art of training and talk to people about this, can you explain the difference? Yes, it's about measurement and engagement. Now it's about that with face to face to. But we've been lying to ourselves for years about whether our face to face has been been effective or like they came. They showed up. We check the box. Nobody got killed the next day. Awesome success. Sad but true. And with it's virtual, it's much, much harder to say they were engaged. It's much, much harder to get people to comment and participate and be involved. And so we and and part of this big face to face one was a lot of interaction, a lot of activities. They were going to have a capstone project at the end. This is leadership development. It's not. Just come in and listen to us talk. You've got to do something in order to move yourself on the spectrum of leadership. And so it was like, Okay, how are we going to do all that independent? Because now they're going to be work groups and they're gonna have camaraderie, and there's gonna be a nice natural competition and Now everything's going to be 100% by yourself and you got to turn it in. And now we have to write comments back to you on your assignments, which even the concept assignment sounds really awful. Because there was, like a schoolteacher like Wait, I know. I call it Oyo on your own. You know, it don't work that we're trying to. We're trying to develop a euphemism for it, so it goes down a little bit easier. But so, yeah, so everything had to have a trackable, measurable component. So you could say to the client, You know, everyone's engaged, everyone's participating, so and so is struggling. We need to follow up on this. They really didn't get it. And it started off with a lot of exploration because I hadn't even done that level of blended virtual before. I had done virtual and I had done better than the average virtual. But not to the degree that we really blew this thing out, and it was It took a lot more people. I could have never done it alone as myself, at least not in a year. Um, and it took. It took a lot of different expertise it took. It took two individuals under the age of 30 for sure, because they were like, you know, we can create that source in Google docs and they can do a mail merge in order to turn it into this, and it can go back this way, and I'm like, that sounds awesome. So English, please. I know we need a macro for that. What's the macro? And I'm like, Okay, so So Yeah, so it was It was phenomenal. And But here is, like, the coolest part as we finished the first stage at the end of last year. And, uh, and then we immediately had to start building phase two, which we always had a plan on doing. And so we were building phase two. But after we finished phase one, instead of sending these people home back to their businesses after spending two days together face to face instead, we had all of this written documentation. And if you want to find out about the research behind to talk to Snyder, because he's like totally on that side of the house. But we found we had all this information and we saw that the projects they were creating to to document and demonstrate their leadership growth. It fell into three very unique categories. We found that just the process of doing a heavy blended learning virtual program identified holes in and J hard from Lori. I will tell you this, you know, holes in where he thought they had things going on. But the virtual world has exposed opportunities, and, uh, and all of a sudden we were like, Okay, we got to shift gears. So it went from, you know, we had these rent created cohorts of working group kind of thing, and now all of a sudden, we see that there's actual projects that that link up into major categories, And so we started creating these new pods and so one of the pods professional development because so many people put training and development and growth on their on their capstone projects, and other people were doing major systems stuff and other people were doing environmental stuff. And so, you know, we had to rework it, but because we had written documentation because we recorded everything because we had standards that everyone had to meet as part of their training as opposed to showing up that day and maybe staying awake. They actually to turn stuff in And, um, in mind you Loreal also even before it was virtual may participate active, appropriate participation in this as part of their performance goals. So which was a game changer? That's very rare to get. And so, you know, we had real stuff and we could say This person is awesome. They're on track. They know what they're doing. We could say this person needs a little bit of help or we should We should link up these two people Based on the virtual stuff that we were getting. We had small group Webinars. We have big group webinars. We had to watch, you know, YouTube videos and make comments and feedback and identify areas of growth and all of that stuff that if you were in a face to face room with 30 people, maybe two or three people would raise their hands and you have those people who were primarily engaged. Then you have the people that may be engaged in smaller groups, and then you have the folks that will never say a word. But if they've got to turn stuff in, and their boss is expecting that as part of their performance, Suddenly you get these words, these ideas, these concepts from people that you were like, Whoa, Sleeper. Their holy cow. Look at this stuff. And so it's been we've we've literally been able to identify individuals to the degree that, you know, we're like, Wow, this person has a lot more value than maybe we thought in this area or that area or whatever, just by virtue of how they were responding to stuff. And, you know, is it easy? No. You know, does it require some real work and some real departmental effort? Yeah, regular training does true to and and proof and measurement and regular training was also going to be a lot of work, just different kinds of work. But we've we've been able to finally kind of show that this can be done. Go ahead. No, no, no. I thought your hand was going. I was I was moving. I was moving the stand. Um, one of the one of the things is, uh, that we with the measurement, everything is obviously when you're working for a company as large as Loreal or any company you wanna be able to prove it worked. And with that idea that you know, you didn't count a body the next day. And that's the best you have for proof. It's been one of the biggest problems in the training world for years is how do we show our value in training and how do we How do we prove that? You know, we need to invest in our professionals in the industry more to make them better and better, And, uh, so this really kind of leads to that. And then what ended up happening is because so many people identified training, development and design as part of their capstone projects. J. Said, Well, you're gonna have to teach them all ninja then, and I'm like, Okay, that sounds good. So I took an eight hour face to face Ninja program. I flipped it very quickly for a already planned eight hour face to face and did it virtually last year and made some of that adaptations, but but really didn't have enough time to go. You know, I'm getting into this thing. I'm now flipped it into 12 hours, and it's so it's four hours three weeks at a time with work on your own, and I'm literally going through everything they write. So when they say Here are my three sample learning objectives, I'm providing specific feedback that says, Hey, you're on this or maybe tighten this up or maybe think about this, or is this the angle you really want to go with? And so we're literally giving them stuff back so that they can tangibly hold it and they'll be able to say I'm moving on the spectrum of professionalism. Then they can also say that to their employer. When they ask, you know what this bill for and whether it be an internal bill or or an external one from someone like me, We still have to justify why we're doing training, why we need to invest in more time and energy. Conversely, I've had people jobs I would have said no to before covid that they've come to me and they go, we got to flip this and I'm like, I'll only participate in flipping it. You know, adding audio to power point basically only participate in doing that. If you promise this is part of a greater flip, you know that you're going to do more virtually and you're going to clean it up later. But you have to stay functioning today, and they're like Yes, yes, yes, And I said, Okay, because I'm not going to just I'm not just going to take some audio and stuff it with some power points and expect people to learn It's not gonna happen, But don't you think you to an extent that that's a lot of the things that we see inside of different organizations currently, where their their LMS will say quote unquote is a PowerPoint presentation that has some audio to it or somebody's recording? Uh, somebody was just standing in front of a group of people, said some things. I might even been in front of a camera and said some things and all of a sudden, now answer these five questions and you have become a safety professional or you are credited next. Yeah, that just makes your crunching. As I'm saying, I'm wondering, um, you know, it's funny when it's so before Covid, uh, one of my my long time colleagues friends. First person I ever did my my keynote wife left behind for, um, back in South Carolina. He had come to me probably four or five years ago and he says, You know, our new orientation program, New employee orientation It's overwhelming. It's this. It's this. And so I gave him a quote, and he's like, Ouch! You know, how am I gonna How am I going to justify that? And I'm like I said, Do your numbers I said, You know, how many times are you doing new employee orientation every week, every month? How many people are doing it around the size of the company? There are regional company in the South and and literally he was able to prove that like he would recoup his money back in like, two weeks. And I said, You know, that's that's that's business acumen, baby. That's That's the the R O. I. And we took and I think it was a six or eight. Our new employee orientation, with all the power points videos and all this kind of stuff, and it was face to face with some some video work. We took it down to a 28 minute new employee orientation video. Wow! And and I said, I said, You get what this means, right? And he goes, Yeah, that's what I'm paying you for. And so this is a electrician, and they wanted to make sure that they went through their their their kind of code of ethics there. 10 components there, 10 pillars. And then they want to hit like the top six, um, killers. The things that you really needed to know. And I said, Okay, so your electricians, you you get two minutes on electrical safety. That's all you get two minutes on fall protection, two minutes on confined space entry. I said, Do you understand what that means? And he goes, yes, it means that we have to train more later instead of on the first day. And I'm like, Yes, yes, because they don't remember anything. From the first day I've been begging companies to do that. I said, get rid of that eight hours of safety orientation and just prohibit them from doing anything that you consider hazardous until they've had that face to face training by their supervisor, of whom you outfit with the capabilities, I said. But, you know, making them sit through eight hours or a 10 hour OSHA card before they can walk on your job site. They're not any safer than they were two days prior. But that's such a common practice, though that's that's the interesting part. So when you bring this up and you say, OK, here's 28 minutes you've changed the way that the programs worked. He's excited. How are the people that he reports to? What did he give you? Any feedback on that on how they how they interacted? Actually, it was really funny because they loved it. And this is a pretty special company. They really, really, really care about their people. So when I said to him, You know, I need a bazillion pictures because for me to animate this thing with pictures of your people doing your things and talking about your pillar and culture and things like that, you know, I need pictures to to prove that. And so he's that client that could send me a dropbox connection with 500 pictures taken at Safety Day, taken at, you know, new employee orientation day taken during training all over the southern southeastern United States. So we were able to build a the most uplifting program and it was more about welcome to us. And we really do care about you in safety matters than it was about. Don't do this and don't do this because basically, fall protection was Here are three or four real basic rules and you can't do any of those yet. And you need to talk to your supervisor If if you know, And if you get asked to do something, your your answer is no. And so it was It was actually very freeing and simplifying to take all of that away. Now, yeah, you still have to build the parts where the supervisor has to train people, but we should be building those pieces into place anyway. The safety people shouldn't be doing new employee orientation. It costs too much money. It's a waste of time. You get them out onto the job three days later, you have to tell the same stuff again anyway. So I mean and honestly, from a production and and money standpoint, it's a much better idea to get rid of it. But OSHA and legal issues have made us so frightened that were like, Oh, no, we can't do anything. And I had a client years and years ago, and he's like, Well, we gotta have got to have a heat prep. Gotta have heat prep in it. And I said, Well, you only have to have heat prep in certain months of the year for new employee orientation. You know, you could wait and do it later. No, you gotta have it no matter what, Because they're going to look for it. And I remember asking his boss and I said, I said, Why is he so scared about this? And he goes, Oh, another company work forgot, cited for it. I said, Oh, great. So our entire safety initiative is driven by fear from a previous citation. Compliance Capitalism. Welcome aboard. Crazy makes me crazy. So with everything going on, so you have this that comes up your you have to convert to virtual getting everything started. You made the big move, but we're leaving something out of the out of the box here. Prior to this, about a year before all of covid shutdown, you decided to take a director position at the B. C S P. How do you come up with the free time to do this? Luckily, they went virtual so I actually, yeah. Just my vote is up for for my my two year renewal, So, yeah, I don't know about you, but like this last year went by so slow and so and I don't have any real memories from it. So everything feels like only a year ago. But it's really two years ago because covid eight, like, 12 months of my life and didn't give me any real memories. And I'm sure that's not true for everyone. But for someone who got on a plane 70% of the time, my my existence was wiped out. And so I know, because people are like, Hey, we'd love to interview on how you're surviving covid. I'm like, you're not gonna interview me on surviving covid. I don't know if I will, and I really didn't know at the beginning of it, but no, Um, yeah. So the B C s P stuff. It was, um you know, we flipped that to virtual. They had their research conference that was coming into play last fall that had to get delayed. It's going to get delayed again. Um, we're actually prepping up for our our spring, um, our spring board meeting, so that will be done virtually. We did our fall meeting last year and, uh, and the spring meeting last year. And so I Yeah, there's new board members I've never met face to face. I've only met them virtually, and it's already kind of tough because you only get together so many times a year. And now it's like Now we've missed the first couple of chances and, you know, people who are so supportive of the organization, you know, they've retired out of their positions, their volunteer positions, and it's like you didn't even get to hug him goodbye. And so it's, uh, it's been it's been challenging. It's been challenging. This is the J. Allen show. Hey, have you ever wanted to hear what's going on around in the world of safety and you're not able to do so? Have you ever wanted to take a listen to what exactly is going around in the world of safety? What if we call that thing around the safety pie we told you month over month what is happening in the mix? Would you care to know? What would it be worth to you? Now? Here's the fun part. Besides that, you can find out exactly what's going on inside of the world of safety. There's also other information available there stuff that you can start using as early as today. How about you give us a look? Go to our website safety FM plus dot com at safety FM plus dot com to find out what exactly is going on inside of the world of safety around the world of safety, inside of the world of safety. And don't forget to tell them that J. Allen Center. I'll see you on the other side to join the Revolution. We are back on the J. Allen show on safety FF you're seeing now the challenges across the board with everything that you're doing. Here's my question. You have a new safety professional that's coming into the business. There went to school. They have got some credit. Ations went to the different organizations that they can get accredited. What's the glimmer of hope that you can give them, especially coming into something where there's some places that are not hiring, There are. I mean, let's say we're new to the field and coming in. What can you tell them? well, one. I know people are hiring and and so here's my greatest glimmer of hope and it's pretty. It's pre covid, but I still think it. It's indicative of greater things. So I met a young, um, a young woman who was in a program out in the Southwest. Excuse me, Northwest and she had come in on some of my virtual. No, it wasn't program pre covid. Now that I think about it, it's covid. She sat in on some of my SSP virtual presentations last summer, and she reached out to me afterwards. And she goes, you know, could you take a couple minutes and talk to me? And I said, Yeah, absolutely So we were chatting about it and she was saying, Oh, I I need to get an internship, but no one's going to take me and it's the only way I'm gonna graduate. And you know, I got this challenge in this challenge and I said, Well, what about a virtual internship? And she goes, does really exist, I said, I think they do now. And so, um, I told her, I said, You have to put together a description of what you need and you get it on LinkedIn and I will I will do my best to push it forward so that people can contact you. She got a virtual internship, so she never has to leave her home or her schooling in the Pacific Northwest. And she found it through linked in by putting herself out there and and laying it on the line and saying, Yeah, I'm asking for a lot. I want you to pay me from really far away without ever having to meet me. But welcome to the New World kind of thing and and it worked. And so I think I think that's happening. I think I think we need more advice for the existing professionals than the new ones. Because they are. They are just getting blasted with all of these new skill sets. I mean, you know, suddenly, suddenly you gotta know how to install walkthrough thermometers and and make sure the maintenance packages right so that you can let people into the building. And yesterday, your biggest first aid concern was whether not yet enough band aids. And so, you know, we've pushed the the scope of what a safety professional does, so far with with covid, um, and so that the next step is the is our leadership aspect. What are we doing as survivors of of covid heroes of surviving? Because I think the safety people are heroes just as much as as many of the others who have done great things. And so it's like, OK, what are you doing now to reflect back on yourself to say, What did I learn from this? How do I manage from a distance? How do I run meetings from a distance? How do I run meetings where everyone's wearing masks and I can't see their face to see whether or not they're upset? You know, how do I How do I conduct training with only six people Max in the room or, you know, whatever the new policies and procedures are, I think I think we will see some of the best managers rise up. And I think we'll see some changes, uh, in upper management and some of the bigger firms and more well known ones, because the people who could not pivot and adapt during covid they're going to prove unnecessary, because I don't think this is our last big deal. And, heck, even if it wasn't for Covid last year, we had crazy weather. We had it again this year. You know, we had entire state shutting down and completely unexpected. So the concepts of supply chain and the relationship of safety to supply chain and and how you do things in a completely different mold I think it's really the test for the future leaders. And I think the younger excuse me, the rising professionals maybe not necessarily younger, but the rising professional, the emerging professional. They're going to have more adaptability because they've gone through school with this because they might be younger and you know it's not going to. They're going to be like, Oh, yeah, which pandemic was that? By the time there are? Don't say that, really, by then you know the idea. So let's ask. So let me ask the strange question here, because here's where a lot of this is going to change, too. So now the market becomes a little bit more competitive because now you're not competing just with the people in your local area. You might be competing with people from across the country, so there's been some things inside of the H R department of the world that have come up with this. So let's say, for instance, I'm working in New York City, New York, and all of a sudden hey, I decided that, Hey, if I can work from home, I'm going to move to middle of nowhere. Alabama. Nothing against Alabama of Alabama. Do you think that these people deserve a pay cut because they have moved from New York City to Alabama for doing the kid going there? Come on, it's a question that's coming out. But here's the Here's the other portion. So think about the original portion of the question as you're taking a look at it now, the competitive salary Does it change based on where the company is located or where the person is located? Well, I've experienced this personally. When I I had a job in the suburbs of Chicago and they allowed us to relocate back to South Carolina and they didn't take my suburban Chicago pay. So So I know what that could feel like, because I was like, you know, and it would have been okay, because South Carolina is a whole lot cheaper. Uh, conversely, I know other people right now who are making such moves and keeping their their San Francisco pay in this case. And, uh, you know, I think I think I think it is up to the professional to prove their value. That's really what it is. You're gonna have to prove that value anyway, To be able to say I can do this job from someplace else effectively, even when we go back to whatever normal will be and and, you know and you know, blah, blah, blah and you may have to negotiate, you may have to say I want to live in and Podunk Nowhere, but I'm gonna have to fly back a lot. So I'll take the pay cut to cover the airline fees because, you know, you can't You can't. You can't have it all. And you know So, um, but yeah, I think I think it's up to the safety professional to prove that they deserve what they're already getting if they want to move to a different location. But I think that's true for anything because so many businesses were going remote. But it was perceived for a lot of years that that most safety people at the on the on the floor level had to be there. Be there. And I still think that's true to some degree because, um, you have to connect with your people. They have to know you're there and that you're part of them. But does the corporate person need to be at a plant? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know, I certainly think not as much as they used to. If they got better at their job, which I hope they did, hopefully they did with everything going on now. So with your company and you doing 70% traveling pre covid, do you think that you'll go back to that lifestyle when things become the new normal? Or do you think that a lot of your a lot of your organization now will be based off a virtual yes, great answer. Great answer. I think what it's going to allow to happen is the people that want me face to face will continue to bring me out face to face for those functions. But because things can be done virtually not by people who didn't think they could do a virtual event before I can, I can become easier to obtain, you know, because if I can just sit at my computer here and and do a keynote for you, the cost isn't the same. You know, I have to be honest about that. I don't have to spend three days getting they're doing it and flying back and all that kind of stuff, so the cost isn't the same, But I can also fit two or three in a day. And so there's some some real value associated with that. So I think it's going to be kind of teared. It's like, you know, do you want the virtual presenter and and and are you ready to do the work to do a virtual presentation and take the risk of what virtual can mean? Because once we get back to new normal, whatever that is, I love how everyone qualifies that term, no matter what, because we're like because, Well, we were all hoping we're like your normal. It's gonna be awesome. Um, I was 2021. That hasn't worked out yet. I know. I'm still playing. I'm still playing. Um, so yeah, I think I think for those groups that that mastered the virtual skill and are ready to keep going. With that. I think that I can still offer that. I push back on doing my, um, my big keynote virtually. I pushed back for almost a year, and finally one location convinced me to do it, and several people reached out afterwards and they said, Listen, we felt the same thing when you stared into the camera is when you stared into the audience and I'm like, Awesome, You know, that's that's that's really cool. But so I think I think, um, I will go back to traveling. How much? I don't know. I think that will be a direct result of, um, I think it's gonna be a direct result of how survivable major meetings were. You know, like how? How is SSP and NSC on a regional level? A local level, uh, country level, you know, international stuff. How well are those groups doing financially? What is their program going to look like next year or the year after that? And what will they be doing in terms of bringing speakers in? And what does that mean? Because I don't think I don't think we know yet. The impact it had on organizations that most of their budget relied on convention dollars, which is a lot of trade associations. A lot of them, I mean tons of them work out in that particular fashion. I mean, I I will take it easy based on who I'm talking the conversation with. But some of the things I understand the pricing didn't seem correct for virtual compared to in person, at least in my opinion, not saying that. That's hard to say in my opinion. And I think I think that it kind of left some bad taste in some people's mouth in regard to some of those conferences that did not actually adjust the correct price to the correct price points. According to some. I think if they were already in it, you know, like if it was already booked and planned and all that kind of stuff, um, we don't really even know, like how much they still we're left holding the bag because we don't know about their insurance policies of being able to back out of contracts because, you know, nobody paid attention to the pandemic clause in contract, and so that was a big thing and when things first started closing. People are like, What does this mean? And I said, Well, if the state declares an emergency and then your contract language, depending on what it says and all of that is relevant And so I think I think for those folks, they couldn't do it any other way, you know, they were already financially in it and in that deep. But I do think that they need to be reasonable, that if they're going to go full on virtual going forward that they can't charge $1000 for a day of virtual. It's just not the same for simply as you don't even have to rent the space like you normally do. You don't have to buy the food. So we know that those basic things aren't there. And then, um, you know, I've had to, you know, I don't want it. I don't want to admit it, but you know, someone calls me and says they want me to do something virtual. I start off at my regular price. It ain't working, okay? And they throw out a number and I'm like, All right, I I can live with that, you know, you're not. You're huge. You're you're you're struggling to survive. I get that we'll work with it. So and I think that's where some of the difference actually takes place now as well is where people are not seeing where some of the cost is. Let's say, for instance, you don't have a set up inside of your inside of your office space, your household or wherever you're actually doing a potential recording from you have to have access to a studio. So there is some pricing there that people don't kind of normally recognize. And some of these studios are extremely expensive to rent out, depending what all you have inside of there always find that interesting. Well, I've dropped several 1000 to build my I've redone my office three times since covid, you know, and I've dropped several $1000 trying to buy the equipment, and it's it's still baffling me on a daily basis, Um, and and so, yeah, I mean, and that's legit. It's like if if if you want a pro, then you pay for a pro and if if you and your peeps are okay with with blurry images and and pixilated and you know whatever. That's okay, too. If everybody's fine with that, it's very what standard do you want? And what are you doing as the buyer? Professional. Speaking to make sure you get it is very difficult to you. Got to be able to watch that box. You've got to be able to make sure that your camera's still going good. Uh, you've got to have some queuing for yourself to kind of, like determine if things are happening where they're supposed to be happening. What you kind of envisioned and so both can be challenging. And I don't believe that everybody has the skill set to do all of those. Some people need a lot more hand holding, Uh, and then the defense of those folks. Um uh I have to reboot my computer like, four or five times a day because I do a WebEx I'm gonna do a go to meeting, and then I do a zoom you pre record, and it's you know, what ended up happening and people could This is all getting caught on on the right. Do you want me to do a redo that if you wanted to? Just so yeah, I have to reboot constantly because the peripherals and all of the settings. And, you know, just today you and I had difficulties and you're like, Well, turn off the sound on your Web browser and I'm like, What? You know, and and that's I guess that's the strange thing about how this technology has worked. And I mean, it's advanced as well at the same time. So you referenced there that you don't mind doing either or and you reference that some people don't have the skill set to be able to do everything at once. Would you? If you were looking back to the past when you're first starting, would you would you consider having a moderator do the chat box? No, I'm too much of a control freak. You just admitted this, You know this right to work recorded now, actually, use this later on you. It's not, know, really. For me, that chat coming in is an integral part of my connection, particularly with people I can't see. So when something pops up, you know I personally when doing this kind of live stuff with chats and everything else, I think that a great speaker has to be ready to be able to adapt. And me go. Oh, gosh, you know what? I was just talking about the slide, but this awesome question just came in from J and J J was asking this, and that is an awesome question. Let me answer that before I move on, because I bet other people are gonna want to hear it. You've got to be able to roll with it, answer it, then be able to jump back on your topic and keep on going. This, uh, you know, I have I have, you know, companies that have brought us in and they're like, you know, what do you want all your Q and A at the end. And I'm like, No, they might have forgotten by then. And it's like, Well, you know, do you want us to read the chat box questions off to you? I'm like, No, I'm perfectly confident. I just I feel like, um, that's part of my full commitment to the learner that that they deserve that from me. Now, maybe if I was super duper rich or I was the head of some government agency or something, I might have somebody do it for me, I could see I could see where. Maybe that would happen one day, but for me right now, I just I don't want other people messing in that relationship. I don't want 3rd and 4th parties in there. I want to able to connect directly with the learner, even if I have no clue who they are. No, that's a question that I normally get quite a bit about the moderator, non moderator, depending on how you look at it and then the other thing that normally pops those which were slightly touched on is how the conversation can change based on the question that comes in if it's live opposed to pre recorded. So I appreciate you actually answering both. Now we did start off the original portion of the conversation that you had built a platform for Loreal in regards of how they could actually do virtual trainings. Will you have anything available like that for the public I am working with with Dan Snyder and safety mentor and safety managers actually housing the platform. So we're actually using Loreal and using safety Training ninja as the proof test. You know, how do we do this How do we make it work? All this kind of stuff kind of break it, and so it will be available going forward. And that was kind of the planets like, this is how we have to do things going forward. And, um, I just can't see. I can't see a company investing in the content necessary to do something amazing and then throw another $50,000 for travel on it if we can show that it can be just as effective, if not more effective. And the feedback we've gotten? One of the questions in the survey was, um and we used a very different kind of survey based on some new thinking in the learning world. Um, and, uh, this guy named Tall Heimer and he's like, you know, quit saying on a scale of 1 to 5, how much you liked this virtual program, you know, get in there and really get specific. So So instead, you you develop answers kind of like light, but you develop these answers in advance so that they meet certain definitions of your own criteria. So, you know, I would recommend this course, Um, only if it was live in the future. Yeah, I would recommend this course virtually with the following changes. Oh, my gosh. I can't believe I learned this much looking at my computer. So, you know, we really tried to change the way the perspective was, as opposed to people just circling all of the numbers, you know, in one giant circle. Um and so so that's been really key. But what's been amazing for us is now that we're pushing this learning development side of Loreal. On several occasions, the folks who are working on this are going and then we're going to do like what you guys did and they were like, And then we're going to do that thing like what you did, and we'll have, like, homework like you did. And and so we're like, Oh, my God, it worked. It worked, you know? I mean, like, we thought it worked. But now they're actually telling us how they're going to mirror the work that we did in their virtual, um, distribution of materials. And that's been that was just nuts. Myself and several other individuals behind the scenes were on the call, and all of us are like increasing flack in the background going. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. This is it. It's working. It's working. So I I truly believe it could always work, but nobody wanted to invest in the test and covid forced that. And so I'm so lucky that I was in the right place at the right time with Loreal for them to be able to say, Let's do this. So, with that being said, do you have a rough date on when this might actually come to flourish in for the general public? Well, ninja will be related for the general public and probably the next 30 days. I'll be doing open registration for ninja, probably 25 to 30 people. Max, 12 hours long. Four hours, three weeks, three days in a row, three weeks in a row. Whatever the client wants or, well, pre set it up. Now, when, uh, we will probably, huh? Oh, gosh, I'm guessing here, um, you know, if someone came up, Yeah, came out today and said, Yeah, we want this when you just start moving on it, we'll say Yeah, okay, we'll start tomorrow. But, you know, when will we have the the proven data research that we need to give to companies that say this really works. It's going to be a little bit longer before we've got that all kind of compiled. And we're working on that huge research project. So we can actually say this proves that this stuck. This proved that this work is connected with them. They have this memory. I've already implemented this procedure or whatever the case, so that data to support it. Now, if you already believe me and you want to hire me, that's fine. We can do that part, but they have the actual data part. But, I mean, for years, I've been pushing companies towards this, and I remember several years ago a very, very large company whose name I won't recommend that I was. I was saying, you know, this is where we need to go, and this is how we need to take our training to the next level and did it up, and they looked at me. They said, Wow, do you have any data on that? And I said, Your blah, blah, blah. You collect the data. People need your data, not the other way around. I'm like, if you won't do it, then then who will? And so Loreal is the one who is willing to do it, to invest in it so that others can follow suit and believe in the data. And and that's been one of the issues, because people like I'd love to do that, is there is there? Is there a pattern I can follow that somebody else did? And I'm like, No, it's just me with really good ideas. I want to do it. It's too scary. And now Covid forced it, and that's what's so awesome. Now, Virginia, if people want to know more about you in which you have going on work and they go to find out more information safety training ninja dot com regina McMichael dot com is probably the best thing, or look me up on LinkedIn. I haven't been as active as I should be with since you've been busy. You've been slightly a little bit busy lately. Yeah, that actually did a post with a picture of all of the ninja class. They were all holding the book, and it was a beautiful picture. I know. Well, I was like, Does everyone have their book? And they held up like Oh, screenshot, that's awesome. So yeah, so it's It's been amazing. And I never thought that I would use the book as a text to teach a course, and that was never in my mind when I wrote it and now like to be able to do that is just amazing. So, Regina, I appreciate you coming on to the show. Absolutely Thank you for having me want more of the J. Allen show. Go to safety FM dot com. The views and opinions expressed on this
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[00:00:03] spk_0: this show is brought to you by Safety FM. Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the J. Allen Show. You know how it is. It's another Tuesday and we are here spending some time together and talking about what is going on inside of the world of safety. Anyway, it's a couple of things before we get started, too deep into this whole thing right now. We have a contest going on at safety FM dot com, four slash contest. All you have to do is go over there and take a look at what is going on. The contest consists of the following 21 hour sessions with yours truly, where we get to discuss a little bit about everything, whatever you want to discuss. Also, before I forget, our safety reconfigured class is back by popular demand. So we'll be doing that on March the 31st at 11 a.m. Eastern standard time. So if you want to join us for that, you can go to safety FM dot io for some more information anyway, So let's get started right now and what's going on today. Today we have the return of Regina McMichael. Yeah, she comes back and we're gonna sit down and talk about some things that are going on inside of the industry. Last time she was here, she told us the story and how she got involved inside of the world of safety. Just in case you're not familiar with Regina, she is the president of the Learning Factory, Incorporated, the safety, passion driven education and training company she has over 30 years experience in safety and health, education, training, communication and leadership. But let's get all that to the side. And let's get this conversation started right now. What? The safety training ninja herself. Where? Gina McMichael, right now on the J. Allen Show. The show is streaming now on safety FM dot Life We've spoken before, but I have to ask, with you going through everything that's going on right now, how has your life changed over the last year? Um gosh, I don't think we have enough time to cover all that. We can always make it, though. Yeah, that's true. You get about because interesting stuff. Um, you know, it's funny. I was I was literally four days from doing a joint launch with another consultant with with Loreal of the Americas. Four days from a multi country, multi year, multi effort live delivery. And on February 28th of last year, um, Loreal stopped all international travel and we were going to start delivering on March 2nd. So it was like or, you know, whatever close enough. And, uh, it was it was a really tough choice for them because they were one of the first companies to make that global choice. And it was really funny, because it's like, OK, just, you know, we're gonna stop this and we've been building it for years and we're about, I mean literally boxes of stuff taken on airplanes and the whole thing. And so, uh, it's funny because it's so J harf with with Loreal and then Dan Snyder with safety mentor. We've been working on this project, and, uh, immediately Loreal goes into response to covid and starts doing their thing. And I basically sat around for months. The only the only outside customer action I had was people saying, Yeah, it's canceled or we're going virtual. How do we do that? And so I was just kind of filling in the pieces, and I really kind of like lost contact with the world I lost, how to keep track of calendars and and and do stuff and, like bills were coming in. And I'm like, Oh, God, mail mail. You should look at that. And so I went, had a really long downtime, and then Loreal was ready to start crying. Come back up. And when they first talked about going virtual, I was like, No, I'm like, I don't want to do it. We've done too much work. It's It's really gonna be, you know, great live and face to face and all this. And then another two months passed and I go, Yes, it's not going to get better. So So yeah, so we flipped it. And I'll tell you, it took us more time to flip the program to a good virtual program. Not just a virtual program, but a good one took us more time and effort to flip it than it did to create the original product, because there's but there's a couple of things going on there, too. Besides, so this major things occurring, but not so long prior to that, you had made a pretty big move to you had moved from a different state moving into a totally new state. Yes, Yes, yes. And And And that part, it was the best thing that could've happened to me for covid because, you know, I moved into the floor. I know, right? Yeah, no state tax. And And, Yeah, it really turned out to be a great thing, because if I had been where I was before with Covid, I would have really become super alienated. But my best friend's kind of lived next door to me right now. And so we we share a bubble, and I haven't got a puppy. So, uh, which they'll watch if I ever get back on the road again. Yes. Well, let me ask there because you did reference something and I don't and I don't want to get sidetracked. It is important that of course, you're close to to somebody that's that important to your friends. But you said something that's very crucial. There is a huge difference there between having a class, a piece of content that's available virtual to a good or a great piece of contact. And being is this is what you do and you train and you talk about the art of training and talk to people about this, can you explain the difference? Yes, it's about measurement and engagement. Now it's about that with face to face to. But we've been lying to ourselves for years about whether our face to face has been been effective or like they came. They showed up. We check the box. Nobody got killed the next day. Awesome success. Sad but true. And with it's virtual, it's much, much harder to say they were engaged. It's much, much harder to get people to comment and participate and be involved. And so we and and part of this big face to face one was a lot of interaction, a lot of activities. They were going to have a capstone project at the end. This is leadership development. It's not. Just come in and listen to us talk. You've got to do something in order to move yourself on the spectrum of leadership. And so it was like, Okay, how are we going to do all that independent? Because now they're going to be work groups and they're gonna have camaraderie, and there's gonna be a nice natural competition and Now everything's going to be 100% by yourself and you got to turn it in. And now we have to write comments back to you on your assignments, which even the concept assignment sounds really awful. Because there was, like a schoolteacher like Wait, I know. I call it Oyo on your own. You know, it don't work that we're trying to. We're trying to develop a euphemism for it, so it goes down a little bit easier. But so, yeah, so everything had to have a trackable, measurable component. So you could say to the client, You know, everyone's engaged, everyone's participating, so and so is struggling. We need to follow up on this. They really didn't get it. And it started off with a lot of exploration because I hadn't even done that level of blended virtual before. I had done virtual and I had done better than the average virtual. But not to the degree that we really blew this thing out, and it was It took a lot more people. I could have never done it alone as myself, at least not in a year. Um, and it took. It took a lot of different expertise it took. It took two individuals under the age of 30 for sure, because they were like, you know, we can create that source in Google docs and they can do a mail merge in order to turn it into this, and it can go back this way, and I'm like, that sounds awesome. So English, please. I know we need a macro for that. What's the macro? And I'm like, Okay, so So Yeah, so it was It was phenomenal. And But here is, like, the coolest part as we finished the first stage at the end of last year. And, uh, and then we immediately had to start building phase two, which we always had a plan on doing. And so we were building phase two. But after we finished phase one, instead of sending these people home back to their businesses after spending two days together face to face instead, we had all of this written documentation. And if you want to find out about the research behind to talk to Snyder, because he's like totally on that side of the house. But we found we had all this information and we saw that the projects they were creating to to document and demonstrate their leadership growth. It fell into three very unique categories. We found that just the process of doing a heavy blended learning virtual program identified holes in and J hard from Lori. I will tell you this, you know, holes in where he thought they had things going on. But the virtual world has exposed opportunities, and, uh, and all of a sudden we were like, Okay, we got to shift gears. So it went from, you know, we had these rent created cohorts of working group kind of thing, and now all of a sudden, we see that there's actual projects that that link up into major categories, And so we started creating these new pods and so one of the pods professional development because so many people put training and development and growth on their on their capstone projects, and other people were doing major systems stuff and other people were doing environmental stuff. And so, you know, we had to rework it, but because we had written documentation because we recorded everything because we had standards that everyone had to meet as part of their training as opposed to showing up that day and maybe staying awake. They actually to turn stuff in And, um, in mind you Loreal also even before it was virtual may participate active, appropriate participation in this as part of their performance goals. So which was a game changer? That's very rare to get. And so, you know, we had real stuff and we could say This person is awesome. They're on track. They know what they're doing. We could say this person needs a little bit of help or we should We should link up these two people Based on the virtual stuff that we were getting. We had small group Webinars. We have big group webinars. We had to watch, you know, YouTube videos and make comments and feedback and identify areas of growth and all of that stuff that if you were in a face to face room with 30 people, maybe two or three people would raise their hands and you have those people who were primarily engaged. Then you have the people that may be engaged in smaller groups, and then you have the folks that will never say a word. But if they've got to turn stuff in, and their boss is expecting that as part of their performance, Suddenly you get these words, these ideas, these concepts from people that you were like, Whoa, Sleeper. Their holy cow. Look at this stuff. And so it's been we've we've literally been able to identify individuals to the degree that, you know, we're like, Wow, this person has a lot more value than maybe we thought in this area or that area or whatever, just by virtue of how they were responding to stuff. And, you know, is it easy? No. You know, does it require some real work and some real departmental effort? Yeah, regular training does true to and and proof and measurement and regular training was also going to be a lot of work, just different kinds of work. But we've we've been able to finally kind of show that this can be done. Go ahead. No, no, no. I thought your hand was going. I was I was moving. I was moving the stand. Um, one of the one of the things is, uh, that we with the measurement, everything is obviously when you're working for a company as large as Loreal or any company you wanna be able to prove it worked. And with that idea that you know, you didn't count a body the next day. And that's the best you have for proof. It's been one of the biggest problems in the training world for years is how do we show our value in training and how do we How do we prove that? You know, we need to invest in our professionals in the industry more to make them better and better, And, uh, so this really kind of leads to that. And then what ended up happening is because so many people identified training, development and design as part of their capstone projects. J. Said, Well, you're gonna have to teach them all ninja then, and I'm like, Okay, that sounds good. So I took an eight hour face to face Ninja program. I flipped it very quickly for a already planned eight hour face to face and did it virtually last year and made some of that adaptations, but but really didn't have enough time to go. You know, I'm getting into this thing. I'm now flipped it into 12 hours, and it's so it's four hours three weeks at a time with work on your own, and I'm literally going through everything they write. So when they say Here are my three sample learning objectives, I'm providing specific feedback that says, Hey, you're on this or maybe tighten this up or maybe think about this, or is this the angle you really want to go with? And so we're literally giving them stuff back so that they can tangibly hold it and they'll be able to say I'm moving on the spectrum of professionalism. Then they can also say that to their employer. When they ask, you know what this bill for and whether it be an internal bill or or an external one from someone like me, We still have to justify why we're doing training, why we need to invest in more time and energy. Conversely, I've had people jobs I would have said no to before covid that they've come to me and they go, we got to flip this and I'm like, I'll only participate in flipping it. You know, adding audio to power point basically only participate in doing that. If you promise this is part of a greater flip, you know that you're going to do more virtually and you're going to clean it up later. But you have to stay functioning today, and they're like Yes, yes, yes, And I said, Okay, because I'm not going to just I'm not just going to take some audio and stuff it with some power points and expect people to learn It's not gonna happen, But don't you think you to an extent that that's a lot of the things that we see inside of different organizations currently, where their their LMS will say quote unquote is a PowerPoint presentation that has some audio to it or somebody's recording? Uh, somebody was just standing in front of a group of people, said some things. I might even been in front of a camera and said some things and all of a sudden, now answer these five questions and you have become a safety professional or you are credited next. Yeah, that just makes your crunching. As I'm saying, I'm wondering, um, you know, it's funny when it's so before Covid, uh, one of my my long time colleagues friends. First person I ever did my my keynote wife left behind for, um, back in South Carolina. He had come to me probably four or five years ago and he says, You know, our new orientation program, New employee orientation It's overwhelming. It's this. It's this. And so I gave him a quote, and he's like, Ouch! You know, how am I gonna How am I going to justify that? And I'm like I said, Do your numbers I said, You know, how many times are you doing new employee orientation every week, every month? How many people are doing it around the size of the company? There are regional company in the South and and literally he was able to prove that like he would recoup his money back in like, two weeks. And I said, You know, that's that's that's business acumen, baby. That's That's the the R O. I. And we took and I think it was a six or eight. Our new employee orientation, with all the power points videos and all this kind of stuff, and it was face to face with some some video work. We took it down to a 28 minute new employee orientation video. Wow! And and I said, I said, You get what this means, right? And he goes, Yeah, that's what I'm paying you for. And so this is a electrician, and they wanted to make sure that they went through their their their kind of code of ethics there. 10 components there, 10 pillars. And then they want to hit like the top six, um, killers. The things that you really needed to know. And I said, Okay, so your electricians, you you get two minutes on electrical safety. That's all you get two minutes on fall protection, two minutes on confined space entry. I said, Do you understand what that means? And he goes, yes, it means that we have to train more later instead of on the first day. And I'm like, Yes, yes, because they don't remember anything. From the first day I've been begging companies to do that. I said, get rid of that eight hours of safety orientation and just prohibit them from doing anything that you consider hazardous until they've had that face to face training by their supervisor, of whom you outfit with the capabilities, I said. But, you know, making them sit through eight hours or a 10 hour OSHA card before they can walk on your job site. They're not any safer than they were two days prior. But that's such a common practice, though that's that's the interesting part. So when you bring this up and you say, OK, here's 28 minutes you've changed the way that the programs worked. He's excited. How are the people that he reports to? What did he give you? Any feedback on that on how they how they interacted? Actually, it was really funny because they loved it. And this is a pretty special company. They really, really, really care about their people. So when I said to him, You know, I need a bazillion pictures because for me to animate this thing with pictures of your people doing your things and talking about your pillar and culture and things like that, you know, I need pictures to to prove that. And so he's that client that could send me a dropbox connection with 500 pictures taken at Safety Day, taken at, you know, new employee orientation day taken during training all over the southern southeastern United States. So we were able to build a the most uplifting program and it was more about welcome to us. And we really do care about you in safety matters than it was about. Don't do this and don't do this because basically, fall protection was Here are three or four real basic rules and you can't do any of those yet. And you need to talk to your supervisor If if you know, And if you get asked to do something, your your answer is no. And so it was It was actually very freeing and simplifying to take all of that away. Now, yeah, you still have to build the parts where the supervisor has to train people, but we should be building those pieces into place anyway. The safety people shouldn't be doing new employee orientation. It costs too much money. It's a waste of time. You get them out onto the job three days later, you have to tell the same stuff again anyway. So I mean and honestly, from a production and and money standpoint, it's a much better idea to get rid of it. But OSHA and legal issues have made us so frightened that were like, Oh, no, we can't do anything. And I had a client years and years ago, and he's like, Well, we gotta have got to have a heat prep. Gotta have heat prep in it. And I said, Well, you only have to have heat prep in certain months of the year for new employee orientation. You know, you could wait and do it later. No, you gotta have it no matter what, Because they're going to look for it. And I remember asking his boss and I said, I said, Why is he so scared about this? And he goes, Oh, another company work forgot, cited for it. I said, Oh, great. So our entire safety initiative is driven by fear from a previous citation. Compliance Capitalism. Welcome aboard. Crazy makes me crazy. So with everything going on, so you have this that comes up your you have to convert to virtual getting everything started. You made the big move, but we're leaving something out of the out of the box here. Prior to this, about a year before all of covid shutdown, you decided to take a director position at the B. C S P. How do you come up with the free time to do this? Luckily, they went virtual so I actually, yeah. Just my vote is up for for my my two year renewal, So, yeah, I don't know about you, but like this last year went by so slow and so and I don't have any real memories from it. So everything feels like only a year ago. But it's really two years ago because covid eight, like, 12 months of my life and didn't give me any real memories. And I'm sure that's not true for everyone. But for someone who got on a plane 70% of the time, my my existence was wiped out. And so I know, because people are like, Hey, we'd love to interview on how you're surviving covid. I'm like, you're not gonna interview me on surviving covid. I don't know if I will, and I really didn't know at the beginning of it, but no, Um, yeah. So the B C s P stuff. It was, um you know, we flipped that to virtual. They had their research conference that was coming into play last fall that had to get delayed. It's going to get delayed again. Um, we're actually prepping up for our our spring, um, our spring board meeting, so that will be done virtually. We did our fall meeting last year and, uh, and the spring meeting last year. And so I Yeah, there's new board members I've never met face to face. I've only met them virtually, and it's already kind of tough because you only get together so many times a year. And now it's like Now we've missed the first couple of chances and, you know, people who are so supportive of the organization, you know, they've retired out of their positions, their volunteer positions, and it's like you didn't even get to hug him goodbye. And so it's, uh, it's been it's been challenging. It's been challenging. This is the J. Allen show. Hey, have you ever wanted to hear what's going on around in the world of safety and you're not able to do so? Have you ever wanted to take a listen to what exactly is going around in the world of safety? What if we call that thing around the safety pie we told you month over month what is happening in the mix? Would you care to know? What would it be worth to you? Now? Here's the fun part. Besides that, you can find out exactly what's going on inside of the world of safety. There's also other information available there stuff that you can start using as early as today. How about you give us a look? Go to our website safety FM plus dot com at safety FM plus dot com to find out what exactly is going on inside of the world of safety around the world of safety, inside of the world of safety. And don't forget to tell them that J. Allen Center. I'll see you on the other side to join the Revolution. We are back on the J. Allen show on safety FF you're seeing now the challenges across the board with everything that you're doing. Here's my question. You have a new safety professional that's coming into the business. There went to school. They have got some credit. Ations went to the different organizations that they can get accredited. What's the glimmer of hope that you can give them, especially coming into something where there's some places that are not hiring, There are. I mean, let's say we're new to the field and coming in. What can you tell them? well, one. I know people are hiring and and so here's my greatest glimmer of hope and it's pretty. It's pre covid, but I still think it. It's indicative of greater things. So I met a young, um, a young woman who was in a program out in the Southwest. Excuse me, Northwest and she had come in on some of my virtual. No, it wasn't program pre covid. Now that I think about it, it's covid. She sat in on some of my SSP virtual presentations last summer, and she reached out to me afterwards. And she goes, you know, could you take a couple minutes and talk to me? And I said, Yeah, absolutely So we were chatting about it and she was saying, Oh, I I need to get an internship, but no one's going to take me and it's the only way I'm gonna graduate. And you know, I got this challenge in this challenge and I said, Well, what about a virtual internship? And she goes, does really exist, I said, I think they do now. And so, um, I told her, I said, You have to put together a description of what you need and you get it on LinkedIn and I will I will do my best to push it forward so that people can contact you. She got a virtual internship, so she never has to leave her home or her schooling in the Pacific Northwest. And she found it through linked in by putting herself out there and and laying it on the line and saying, Yeah, I'm asking for a lot. I want you to pay me from really far away without ever having to meet me. But welcome to the New World kind of thing and and it worked. And so I think I think that's happening. I think I think we need more advice for the existing professionals than the new ones. Because they are. They are just getting blasted with all of these new skill sets. I mean, you know, suddenly, suddenly you gotta know how to install walkthrough thermometers and and make sure the maintenance packages right so that you can let people into the building. And yesterday, your biggest first aid concern was whether not yet enough band aids. And so, you know, we've pushed the the scope of what a safety professional does, so far with with covid, um, and so that the next step is the is our leadership aspect. What are we doing as survivors of of covid heroes of surviving? Because I think the safety people are heroes just as much as as many of the others who have done great things. And so it's like, OK, what are you doing now to reflect back on yourself to say, What did I learn from this? How do I manage from a distance? How do I run meetings from a distance? How do I run meetings where everyone's wearing masks and I can't see their face to see whether or not they're upset? You know, how do I How do I conduct training with only six people Max in the room or, you know, whatever the new policies and procedures are, I think I think we will see some of the best managers rise up. And I think we'll see some changes, uh, in upper management and some of the bigger firms and more well known ones, because the people who could not pivot and adapt during covid they're going to prove unnecessary, because I don't think this is our last big deal. And, heck, even if it wasn't for Covid last year, we had crazy weather. We had it again this year. You know, we had entire state shutting down and completely unexpected. So the concepts of supply chain and the relationship of safety to supply chain and and how you do things in a completely different mold I think it's really the test for the future leaders. And I think the younger excuse me, the rising professionals maybe not necessarily younger, but the rising professional, the emerging professional. They're going to have more adaptability because they've gone through school with this because they might be younger and you know it's not going to. They're going to be like, Oh, yeah, which pandemic was that? By the time there are? Don't say that, really, by then you know the idea. So let's ask. So let me ask the strange question here, because here's where a lot of this is going to change, too. So now the market becomes a little bit more competitive because now you're not competing just with the people in your local area. You might be competing with people from across the country, so there's been some things inside of the H R department of the world that have come up with this. So let's say, for instance, I'm working in New York City, New York, and all of a sudden hey, I decided that, Hey, if I can work from home, I'm going to move to middle of nowhere. Alabama. Nothing against Alabama of Alabama. Do you think that these people deserve a pay cut because they have moved from New York City to Alabama for doing the kid going there? Come on, it's a question that's coming out. But here's the Here's the other portion. So think about the original portion of the question as you're taking a look at it now, the competitive salary Does it change based on where the company is located or where the person is located? Well, I've experienced this personally. When I I had a job in the suburbs of Chicago and they allowed us to relocate back to South Carolina and they didn't take my suburban Chicago pay. So So I know what that could feel like, because I was like, you know, and it would have been okay, because South Carolina is a whole lot cheaper. Uh, conversely, I know other people right now who are making such moves and keeping their their San Francisco pay in this case. And, uh, you know, I think I think I think it is up to the professional to prove their value. That's really what it is. You're gonna have to prove that value anyway, To be able to say I can do this job from someplace else effectively, even when we go back to whatever normal will be and and, you know and you know, blah, blah, blah and you may have to negotiate, you may have to say I want to live in and Podunk Nowhere, but I'm gonna have to fly back a lot. So I'll take the pay cut to cover the airline fees because, you know, you can't You can't. You can't have it all. And you know So, um, but yeah, I think I think it's up to the safety professional to prove that they deserve what they're already getting if they want to move to a different location. But I think that's true for anything because so many businesses were going remote. But it was perceived for a lot of years that that most safety people at the on the on the floor level had to be there. Be there. And I still think that's true to some degree because, um, you have to connect with your people. They have to know you're there and that you're part of them. But does the corporate person need to be at a plant? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know, I certainly think not as much as they used to. If they got better at their job, which I hope they did, hopefully they did with everything going on now. So with your company and you doing 70% traveling pre covid, do you think that you'll go back to that lifestyle when things become the new normal? Or do you think that a lot of your a lot of your organization now will be based off a virtual yes, great answer. Great answer. I think what it's going to allow to happen is the people that want me face to face will continue to bring me out face to face for those functions. But because things can be done virtually not by people who didn't think they could do a virtual event before I can, I can become easier to obtain, you know, because if I can just sit at my computer here and and do a keynote for you, the cost isn't the same. You know, I have to be honest about that. I don't have to spend three days getting they're doing it and flying back and all that kind of stuff, so the cost isn't the same, But I can also fit two or three in a day. And so there's some some real value associated with that. So I think it's going to be kind of teared. It's like, you know, do you want the virtual presenter and and and are you ready to do the work to do a virtual presentation and take the risk of what virtual can mean? Because once we get back to new normal, whatever that is, I love how everyone qualifies that term, no matter what, because we're like because, Well, we were all hoping we're like your normal. It's gonna be awesome. Um, I was 2021. That hasn't worked out yet. I know. I'm still playing. I'm still playing. Um, so yeah, I think I think for those groups that that mastered the virtual skill and are ready to keep going. With that. I think that I can still offer that. I push back on doing my, um, my big keynote virtually. I pushed back for almost a year, and finally one location convinced me to do it, and several people reached out afterwards and they said, Listen, we felt the same thing when you stared into the camera is when you stared into the audience and I'm like, Awesome, You know, that's that's that's really cool. But so I think I think, um, I will go back to traveling. How much? I don't know. I think that will be a direct result of, um, I think it's gonna be a direct result of how survivable major meetings were. You know, like how? How is SSP and NSC on a regional level? A local level, uh, country level, you know, international stuff. How well are those groups doing financially? What is their program going to look like next year or the year after that? And what will they be doing in terms of bringing speakers in? And what does that mean? Because I don't think I don't think we know yet. The impact it had on organizations that most of their budget relied on convention dollars, which is a lot of trade associations. A lot of them, I mean tons of them work out in that particular fashion. I mean, I I will take it easy based on who I'm talking the conversation with. But some of the things I understand the pricing didn't seem correct for virtual compared to in person, at least in my opinion, not saying that. That's hard to say in my opinion. And I think I think that it kind of left some bad taste in some people's mouth in regard to some of those conferences that did not actually adjust the correct price to the correct price points. According to some. I think if they were already in it, you know, like if it was already booked and planned and all that kind of stuff, um, we don't really even know, like how much they still we're left holding the bag because we don't know about their insurance policies of being able to back out of contracts because, you know, nobody paid attention to the pandemic clause in contract, and so that was a big thing and when things first started closing. People are like, What does this mean? And I said, Well, if the state declares an emergency and then your contract language, depending on what it says and all of that is relevant And so I think I think for those folks, they couldn't do it any other way, you know, they were already financially in it and in that deep. But I do think that they need to be reasonable, that if they're going to go full on virtual going forward that they can't charge $1000 for a day of virtual. It's just not the same for simply as you don't even have to rent the space like you normally do. You don't have to buy the food. So we know that those basic things aren't there. And then, um, you know, I've had to, you know, I don't want it. I don't want to admit it, but you know, someone calls me and says they want me to do something virtual. I start off at my regular price. It ain't working, okay? And they throw out a number and I'm like, All right, I I can live with that, you know, you're not. You're huge. You're you're you're struggling to survive. I get that we'll work with it. So and I think that's where some of the difference actually takes place now as well is where people are not seeing where some of the cost is. Let's say, for instance, you don't have a set up inside of your inside of your office space, your household or wherever you're actually doing a potential recording from you have to have access to a studio. So there is some pricing there that people don't kind of normally recognize. And some of these studios are extremely expensive to rent out, depending what all you have inside of there always find that interesting. Well, I've dropped several 1000 to build my I've redone my office three times since covid, you know, and I've dropped several $1000 trying to buy the equipment, and it's it's still baffling me on a daily basis, Um, and and so, yeah, I mean, and that's legit. It's like if if if you want a pro, then you pay for a pro and if if you and your peeps are okay with with blurry images and and pixilated and you know whatever. That's okay, too. If everybody's fine with that, it's very what standard do you want? And what are you doing as the buyer? Professional. Speaking to make sure you get it is very difficult to you. Got to be able to watch that box. You've got to be able to make sure that your camera's still going good. Uh, you've got to have some queuing for yourself to kind of, like determine if things are happening where they're supposed to be happening. What you kind of envisioned and so both can be challenging. And I don't believe that everybody has the skill set to do all of those. Some people need a lot more hand holding, Uh, and then the defense of those folks. Um uh I have to reboot my computer like, four or five times a day because I do a WebEx I'm gonna do a go to meeting, and then I do a zoom you pre record, and it's you know, what ended up happening and people could This is all getting caught on on the right. Do you want me to do a redo that if you wanted to? Just so yeah, I have to reboot constantly because the peripherals and all of the settings. And, you know, just today you and I had difficulties and you're like, Well, turn off the sound on your Web browser and I'm like, What? You know, and and that's I guess that's the strange thing about how this technology has worked. And I mean, it's advanced as well at the same time. So you referenced there that you don't mind doing either or and you reference that some people don't have the skill set to be able to do everything at once. Would you? If you were looking back to the past when you're first starting, would you would you consider having a moderator do the chat box? No, I'm too much of a control freak. You just admitted this, You know this right to work recorded now, actually, use this later on you. It's not, know, really. For me, that chat coming in is an integral part of my connection, particularly with people I can't see. So when something pops up, you know I personally when doing this kind of live stuff with chats and everything else, I think that a great speaker has to be ready to be able to adapt. And me go. Oh, gosh, you know what? I was just talking about the slide, but this awesome question just came in from J and J J was asking this, and that is an awesome question. Let me answer that before I move on, because I bet other people are gonna want to hear it. You've got to be able to roll with it, answer it, then be able to jump back on your topic and keep on going. This, uh, you know, I have I have, you know, companies that have brought us in and they're like, you know, what do you want all your Q and A at the end. And I'm like, No, they might have forgotten by then. And it's like, Well, you know, do you want us to read the chat box questions off to you? I'm like, No, I'm perfectly confident. I just I feel like, um, that's part of my full commitment to the learner that that they deserve that from me. Now, maybe if I was super duper rich or I was the head of some government agency or something, I might have somebody do it for me, I could see I could see where. Maybe that would happen one day, but for me right now, I just I don't want other people messing in that relationship. I don't want 3rd and 4th parties in there. I want to able to connect directly with the learner, even if I have no clue who they are. No, that's a question that I normally get quite a bit about the moderator, non moderator, depending on how you look at it and then the other thing that normally pops those which were slightly touched on is how the conversation can change based on the question that comes in if it's live opposed to pre recorded. So I appreciate you actually answering both. Now we did start off the original portion of the conversation that you had built a platform for Loreal in regards of how they could actually do virtual trainings. Will you have anything available like that for the public I am working with with Dan Snyder and safety mentor and safety managers actually housing the platform. So we're actually using Loreal and using safety Training ninja as the proof test. You know, how do we do this How do we make it work? All this kind of stuff kind of break it, and so it will be available going forward. And that was kind of the planets like, this is how we have to do things going forward. And, um, I just can't see. I can't see a company investing in the content necessary to do something amazing and then throw another $50,000 for travel on it if we can show that it can be just as effective, if not more effective. And the feedback we've gotten? One of the questions in the survey was, um and we used a very different kind of survey based on some new thinking in the learning world. Um, and, uh, this guy named Tall Heimer and he's like, you know, quit saying on a scale of 1 to 5, how much you liked this virtual program, you know, get in there and really get specific. So So instead, you you develop answers kind of like light, but you develop these answers in advance so that they meet certain definitions of your own criteria. So, you know, I would recommend this course, Um, only if it was live in the future. Yeah, I would recommend this course virtually with the following changes. Oh, my gosh. I can't believe I learned this much looking at my computer. So, you know, we really tried to change the way the perspective was, as opposed to people just circling all of the numbers, you know, in one giant circle. Um and so so that's been really key. But what's been amazing for us is now that we're pushing this learning development side of Loreal. On several occasions, the folks who are working on this are going and then we're going to do like what you guys did and they were like, And then we're going to do that thing like what you did, and we'll have, like, homework like you did. And and so we're like, Oh, my God, it worked. It worked, you know? I mean, like, we thought it worked. But now they're actually telling us how they're going to mirror the work that we did in their virtual, um, distribution of materials. And that's been that was just nuts. Myself and several other individuals behind the scenes were on the call, and all of us are like increasing flack in the background going. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. This is it. It's working. It's working. So I I truly believe it could always work, but nobody wanted to invest in the test and covid forced that. And so I'm so lucky that I was in the right place at the right time with Loreal for them to be able to say, Let's do this. So, with that being said, do you have a rough date on when this might actually come to flourish in for the general public? Well, ninja will be related for the general public and probably the next 30 days. I'll be doing open registration for ninja, probably 25 to 30 people. Max, 12 hours long. Four hours, three weeks, three days in a row, three weeks in a row. Whatever the client wants or, well, pre set it up. Now, when, uh, we will probably, huh? Oh, gosh, I'm guessing here, um, you know, if someone came up, Yeah, came out today and said, Yeah, we want this when you just start moving on it, we'll say Yeah, okay, we'll start tomorrow. But, you know, when will we have the the proven data research that we need to give to companies that say this really works. It's going to be a little bit longer before we've got that all kind of compiled. And we're working on that huge research project. So we can actually say this proves that this stuck. This proved that this work is connected with them. They have this memory. I've already implemented this procedure or whatever the case, so that data to support it. Now, if you already believe me and you want to hire me, that's fine. We can do that part, but they have the actual data part. But, I mean, for years, I've been pushing companies towards this, and I remember several years ago a very, very large company whose name I won't recommend that I was. I was saying, you know, this is where we need to go, and this is how we need to take our training to the next level and did it up, and they looked at me. They said, Wow, do you have any data on that? And I said, Your blah, blah, blah. You collect the data. People need your data, not the other way around. I'm like, if you won't do it, then then who will? And so Loreal is the one who is willing to do it, to invest in it so that others can follow suit and believe in the data. And and that's been one of the issues, because people like I'd love to do that, is there is there? Is there a pattern I can follow that somebody else did? And I'm like, No, it's just me with really good ideas. I want to do it. It's too scary. And now Covid forced it, and that's what's so awesome. Now, Virginia, if people want to know more about you in which you have going on work and they go to find out more information safety training ninja dot com regina McMichael dot com is probably the best thing, or look me up on LinkedIn. I haven't been as active as I should be with since you've been busy. You've been slightly a little bit busy lately. Yeah, that actually did a post with a picture of all of the ninja class. They were all holding the book, and it was a beautiful picture. I know. Well, I was like, Does everyone have their book? And they held up like Oh, screenshot, that's awesome. So yeah, so it's It's been amazing. And I never thought that I would use the book as a text to teach a course, and that was never in my mind when I wrote it and now like to be able to do that is just amazing. So, Regina, I appreciate you coming on to the show. Absolutely Thank you for having me want more of the J. Allen show. Go to safety FM dot com. The views and opinions expressed on this
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[00:41:56] spk_1: within this podcast
[00:41:57] 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 in dated
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