Week 5 Lecture Transcript

Justin Molocznik

Thank you, Daphne. It's great to be back.

Justin Molocznik

Thank you. That's -- it's a great association because I think a lot of times, safety professionals believe that they carry the burden alone as far as what health and safety is within an organization. But really, it starts at the top. And as you had talked about, the hierarchy of things, the operations, the leaders within your organization, your CEOs, your C suite individuals, that's where the message starts. And that's, you know, that's kind of the bottom line right there.

They're going to set the goals of the organization. They're going to send the messaging. Those are the influencers within the organization. And while as a safety professional, you may be trying to influence them about what the expectations are and what you see as a safety culture, they're the ones that are going to send that message. So they're your top -- your top advocates for safety. You know, other individuals within organizations like your engineering, your design, that gets into really like the safety by design.

So the thing that they're -- the plans that they're putting together, the things that are going to be executed out in the field, those are all preplanned and designed out. And if you have individuals who understand how safety is associated with those things and is able to incorporate those things before they're put into practice out in the field, that's going to help the organization as well. That's where they can be leaders as well, as well as just a field presence. When construction projects are going on, sometimes you'll have engineers who are field facing.

And they're going to help drive the message, while they may be focused on quality or number of materials that are coming in. The safety message should always be a part of that, as well. I think you had also mentioned human resources. It's another one there. Usually, health and safety works very closely. In fact, in some smaller organizations, you'll find that it's a slash human resources slash safety. Same personnel function in both roles.

Fortunately, you know, where I currently am at and some of my previous experiences, it's been separate roles. And they really are two different jobs completely. And you need someone to function in those. And at times, with human resources, it's a lot of interacting -- as a safety professional, interacting with incidents, disciplinary policy. And they really become your partner in developing documentation and tracking things that you might need, whether it be OSHA logs or whatever that might turn out to be.

But they're -- that's how they're -- that's how they kind of work together with health and safety. And again, they are going to be a real interaction with your employees. And they help drive that message as well. They have a number of responsibilities that they have. On the finance side, again, where -- and it's funny because you think about the leaders of your organization and also the people that have control of the finance and the accounting.

They're going to be the ones that are going to have accurate budgeting for your projects. And, say, you know, if you have a $50 million job, what does that mean for safety coverage? What does that mean for safety material and supplies? And they have control of that. And a lot of that comes planning on the front end of things. And it makes it a lot smoother and a lot better and a lot safer, too. So it's really important that each one of those individuals within an organization has that understanding.

One of the other ones I wanted to highlight, too, is your frontline leaders, who could be, in the construction industry, your superintendents, your foremen, your project managers. They're going to have a very heavy influence on the culture and climate of a project at the project site. And they're really going to have an impact on the contractors and how those contractors are managed from anything from the selection of the safe or unsafe contract or day to day operations. They have a huge level of safety influence.

And certainly -- and they certainly should. And a lot of times, again, the message comes from the top, goes to all the different levels of the organization. But a huge impact comes from those frontline leaders.

Justin Molocznik

You know, a big thing is you have opportunity -- before a subcontractor, we'll call them a trade partner, is mobilized to one of your jobsites, you have an opportunity to kind of prescreen those individuals. And there's a number of metrics you can look at to get a good kind of baseline understanding of the kind of work that they do. Or if they're a safe or unsafe organization. And I believe within that report, they touch on that, reviewing things like an EMR rate, reinsurance rate, total recordable incident rate.

The lagging indicators, I guess, more or less after an injury has happened. And, you know, I really liked -- I think it was -- oh, I'm drawing a blank. It was -- it might have been NASA. One of the organizations talked about that not every subcontractor is large enough or sophisticated enough to have to track those types of numbers. And there are other means and methods that you can look at. But really, I think the big takeaway when you look through this report is all that -- all the things you can do before you award a contract, you can look at a subcontractor and see, you know, how they have performed.

One of the things that I like to do when maybe I have a contractor that's a little bit smaller, you know, they have three or four employees, they do specialized work -- if I have any kind of concerns, I'd say maybe they have a few citations from the regulators or something like that, I might take the extra time to go and ask, hey, can I come to one of your active projects right now and look at what you're doing and interact with some of your employees just to kind of assess things in the field? And that's gone a long way to really understand it, because we're talking about two separate things here. One, statistics on paper. The other is what is actually happening out in the field.

And when you can look and assess those things and interact with the employees, it goes a long way. So I really think the big takeaway is all the preplanning stuff, the metrics and having those conversations before somebody is mobilized onto your jobsite. There was a couple other things that came through on that report that I think a really important, the common challenges. If you go to the very end of the report, there's a number of kind of high-level bullet points.

And I was -- you know, what resonates with me is a big one. And that's the formalized structure of a disciplinary policy, which can certainly be a challenge. I like to make sure there's a separation. We talked about disciplinary policy. Health and safety should be a support measure in that, certainly not the driver of that. That's your leadership. That, again, goes back to your frontline leaders. Making sure that you have an understanding when you have a contractor that comes on and say you have an agreement around, this is what you're going to perform.

And this is how you're going to do it safely. There definitely needs to be a line drawn that says if you don't do those things, if you choose not to wear fall protection and expose yourself to a fall or some other hazards created, I think it's really important to have what actions to take place -- what the disciplinary action is going to be. So that's another one that in the report, they talked about a challenge item. And I would 100% agree it's really important to address that kind of stuff.

Justin Molocznik

That's a good question. Sometimes -- I think if you're thinking about that in a sales aspect, it would be your elevator speech. How can you quickly be an advocate and get your point across? You know, I did actually -- the example I'd like to use -- it's just, you know, coming to me. Imagine that. We're talking about a pandemic going on. And especially, I was working on a project at the time, different employer. But COVID was a new thing, trying to figure out how to manage that.

And there were a lot of people within the organization that I was working with that understood work was going to have to continue. There were critical past projects going on where things couldn't shut down. People had to continue to work. But in my role that I was in, in that position, I had a lot of voices of concern coming to me as an individual saying, "Hey, I'm not -- we don't know what's going on here. We're very concerned.

You know, we're hearing these reports from this side of the country and from, you know, the other side of the world." And there was just a lot of different messaging going on and a lot of different concerns going on. And in that moment, personally, not really knowing what was going to happen next, it was an opportunity to say, okay, this is a moment to kind of step up and take the leadership team that was running that particular project and say, this is a real thing. We're going to have to continue to work here, but we're going to have to do it safely. And we're going to line out what the parameters are to make sure that we get this work done safely.

And while, you know, these can be -- they're difficult conversations to have. You don't know what the response is going to be, especially when you're dealing with a pandemic. Right? Everyone was kind of all over the place. But it was -- in that particular instance, it was refreshing because it was almost like everyone in that group that I was dealing with was waiting for someone to just take the lead, be a leader, take accountability for it, and say, okay, guess what, we are going to have to continue to work here.

But we're not going to do it unless we do it safely. How are we going to figure that out? And in this instance, in Seattle at the time, everything was shutting down. But this particular project wasn't going to shut down. So that was a lot of figuring things out. This was when we weren't sure if we were going to be wearing face coverings or not. We weren't sure if the virus was something that was airborne or, you know, coming from another, you know, spot.

So there was a lot of different things that we were trying to figure out and work through. And that was kind of my opportunity. And I think sometimes, in safety, it's those opportunities where, you know, everyone is a little undecided. Are we supposed to go this way or that way? That's where the leadership jumps in and where the opportunity is to take a lead and show that, hey, you know, we're going to do these things, but we're going to do them safely.

So that's my example around that.

Justin Molocznik

Oh, it's been a pleasure.