Risk Management - The DL S4E4
Risk Management - The DL S4E4 is now available on your favorite podcast app!
In this episode of The DL, Diesel Laptops’ Founder and CEO, Tyler Robertson, is joined by Thomas Clark, Risk Management expert.
Challenging traditional safety norms and "going against the grain" defines Thomas Clarks’ approach to safety. He is currently working for Diamond Pet Foods in Columbia, South Carolina, as the Environmental Health and Safety Manager using new approaches to occupational safety. Previously, he worked for the South Carolina regulatory agency, SC Department of Health and Environmental Control (SC DHEC), as the Agency Safety Director. His role at SC DHEC covered all areas of safety, spanning from environmental enforcement, public health programs, healthcare, and statewide emergency response.
Resources:
NC DOL Example Programs
https://www.labor.nc.gov/safety-and-health/publications/example-programs
NIOSH Hierarchy of Controls
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/hierarchy/default.html
Human Organization Performance
https://www.hophub.org/resources
Please like, subscribe, and share. If you have questions or would like to learn more about a particular topic, drop a comment and let us know. =
As always, thank you for watching and listening!
CONNECT WITH Thomas Clark:
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-clark-ms-msm-csp-chmm-30912b37
Website – pathfindersafetyconsulting.com
Listen on your favorite podcast streaming platform below:
Transcript for Risk Management - The DL S4E4:
Tyler Robertson:
Hey, everyone, this podcast show, first of all, it's not a super sexy subject to talk about safety and OSHA and all these things. But I stumbled across a person via LinkedIn, he lives here locally in Columbia and I don't think you'll find someone more passionate about anything in life than you're about to find with Thomas. And he is genuinely an expert in this field. He's going to break down the things you need to know about your business. So if you're a small business or a big business, listening to this, he will break it down for you on the things that will prevent you from huge fines inside your business and things that will protect your company. And these are not expensive things that you need to spend a bunch of money on. They're not complicated. It does take a little bit of time and a little bit of effort.
And I can tell you this about Thomas. He has the heart of a teacher. You'll see that loud and clear through this episode. So if you have any questions at all, you need access the resources. We'll put as much as we can in the show notes. But he is here to help you. And a lot of times he doesn't want to get paid for it. He's just passionate about this. He's passionate about saving lives, passionate about helping prevent an injury. So it's really great to meet people like this. That's what I love about this podcast. It's running across people like Thomas. So sit back, grab a popcorn, maybe even a cocktail. Enjoy the episode, love to hear your feedback at the end of it.
Welcome to the DL, I am your host, Tyler Robertson, the CEO and founder of Diesel Laptops. And this conversation is going to be something, well, long overdue. And if you work in a heavy equipment in the diesel repair industry at all, trucking, you know this is a dangerous profession. People get hurt all the time. People die all the time. I just heard a stat the other day about tow truck drivers and how often those fatalities happen. But there's a lot of things that can go wrong and there's things that you should be doing as a business to protect yourself. There's probably things you don't know you should be doing.
So I figured, you know what, what are the odds I can go find an expert in that field? So I found, the gentleman sent to my left over here, because today we're actually just in the studio, which is great, not having to do a Zoom session. And so I brought today with me Thomas Clark. So Thomas, man, welcome to the podcast.
Thomas Clark:
Yeah, I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
Tyler Robertson:
Well, I think, like any industry professional, there's always certifications, there's always experience. This is your world. Can you talk a little bit about your experience and some of the certifications and some of the... This is your passion, essentially.
Thomas Clark:
Yeah, it definitely is my passion. So my name is Thomas Clark. I work as a industrial, regional kind of safety, so I run three major facilities. Previously, I worked in regulatory, so I worked for South Carolina DHEC, as the safety director for the agency. For my credentials, I have a certified safety professional, so that's kind of like your Willy Wonka, golden ticket in the safety world. I also have a certified hazards material managers license. So I'm like one of three or so that hold both in South Carolina. I also have a master's in management leadership and a master's in occupational safety.
And then on my fun side, I do firefighting. So I have my EMT and I actually specialize in hazard materials. So I do a lot of emergency scenes, hazmat cleanups, all that realm as a volunteer. So I donate those services to the state. And then I teach all over the state of South Carolina, teaching all those.
Tyler Robertson:
You know, can just tell when someone has a passion for something, because everything in the life follows that, right?
Thomas Clark:
Yeah.
Tyler Robertson:
I mean you can tell you're a force to be reckoned with.
Thomas Clark:
It's like the second mistress.
Tyler Robertson:
Exactly. Exactly. So are there any certs you don't have yet that you're going for? Or is it kind of like you've checked all the boxes at this point?
Thomas Clark:
There's always new certs I want to go for. It just comes down the money to get them. So I'm debating going for my paramedic license, and that's really, so I can teach more to rural areas of South Carolina that are in need. And then I'm looking at industrial hygiene manager, but the math is really hard. So I applied to a grant to see if I can get that. And then I'm working on an advanced safety cert through National Safety Council. But it just comes down to money, and actually getting classes, because COVID has canceled a lot of things. So people are starting to pick things back up.
Tyler Robertson:
I know we kind of met a couple months ago, it was, and it's because I was like, "Man, we're building this online platform. I know for me to put training out there for diesel techs and shop owners and mobile guys and equipment operators, safety is a big thing of this." And really, I mean, this is embarrassing to say, but I'm not a safety guy. I know the bare minimum, and I own a business, we got 200 and some odd employees, I have trucks here, we're doing stuff. And I worked in shops forever. I never got safety trained as a shop manager.
Thomas Clark:
Correct.
Tyler Robertson:
There was a couple things our technicians had to do and it was just checking boxes for HR department. So everyone kind of took it how serious.
Thomas Clark:
Yep. That's what most people do.
Tyler Robertson:
I guess, let's just start here. If there's someone listening to this, they're a small business, they're a shop owner, what are some basic, is there some legality stuff? How does it work? Does OSHA make the laws and uphold the laws? Or what's the base level that people need to at least be aware of?
Thomas Clark:
I think we should define the terms. So for business owners, we all know the term risk, in business, you take risk. So all at risk is you're exposed to a hazard, which can cause some type of loss. And as a business owner, you always want to mitigate risk. You also take risk to grow business. So that's a term that a lot of people can apply to safety is being able to operate without the risk. So our job is to reduce risk slowly. And I hate to say a lot of safety professionals, they've never really been trained in risk management. So they struggle with, they just know, check the boxes, walk around with a clipboard, slap people around, write people up, really hammer the rules.
But in my world, and I kind of focus in the new realm of safety called human organization performance, I don't really write people up. I don't struggle. I make more as an educator like I am here today. So OSHA, they do make the rules, but as we all know, Congress is kind of hamstringed and they can't really pass laws right now. So most of your OSHA standards are 50 years old, they haven't been updated to the newest. And this is where it falls on the business owner to sort through the weeds of trying to find out what is the best practice to manage the risk to my business? Because risk, if not controlled, will have some type of exposure which will cause loss to the business.
Tyler Robertson:
I think what was interesting, when we met before, when you explained to me, you're like, "Hey, OSHA, that's really the bare minimum
Thomas Clark:
Bare minimum.
Tyler Robertson:
... that you should be doing," right?
Thomas Clark:
Yeah.
Tyler Robertson:
And I think as my company, we've always done either the bare minimum or what the insurance's told us we have to do. There's been some things like that. What would you say, so say you're starting a repair shop, is there some bare minimum stuff that you would recommend a business owner needs to think about? If they're like, "Hey, okay, we're going to be working on heavy trucks or heavy equipment," do what some of the legalities are that OSHA would even require at that stage?
Thomas Clark:
For OSHA, they do try to do outreaching and education. So any of your state websites or a federal website is going to give you a business one-on-one checklist that you can walk through. However, a lot of people that is legal document that they just glaze through. So we do have programs that I'll mention today. But going back to where you said OSHA is the bare minimum. And the biggest example I always pull out is exposure limits to chemicals. How much can you breathe in and be exposed to? They're back from the '70s, and they actually get updated every two or three years through a private organization.
So you have all these small private organizations like the National Fire Protection Association, NFPA, ANSI, that's your international standards. So you have all these private companies in a way, nonprofits, well, I won't say nonprofits, but they basically publish out these standards but then they put them behind paywalls. So how as a business owner are you able to access if you can't meet the most current? And that's kind of the struggle. So today we're really going to hammer, and I kind of picked the most cited in OSHA, so what are the low hanging fruits an inspector comes out? But in all honesty, the likelihood of an OSHA inspector coming to your site, very, very, very small.
Tyler Robertson:
I got to ask this question. We obviously had Biden, months ago, and the Supreme Court struck this down, but Biden went out and signed executive order for COVID and required testing. And they're like, "OSHA's going to uphold the law." And then when I saw the number of actual OSHA employees, I was like, "How the heck are like..." I don't know, it wasn't many, it was like a couple thousand
Thomas Clark:
Correct.
Tyler Robertson:
... across the whole country. So you're saying OSHA doesn't come out that often, they're just not that big or they're not funded well, what do you see there?
Thomas Clark:
It's a multitude. So without getting too much into the politics, if you don't like regulatory and you can't overturn it, you just defund it. So that's been done to the IRS, that's been done to OSHA, that's been done a lot to agencies that regulate safety in America. And that's where you start getting the baby formula issues that was in the news recently. I can speak in South Carolina, a South Carolina OSHA Inspector maybe makes 40,000, and they're stressed out, they're stretched thin. After two years, they're going to go work private and make double.
Tyler Robertson:
And nobody likes them when they show up either, right.
Thomas Clark:
And I know in South Carolina DHEC it is the same issues. You have onsite wastewater, septic tank inspectors, they make a lot more in private. So you have that end of it. The second one is there's so many businesses in the United States now. Entrepreneurship is huge here. So how are you going to respond to every business? It's just not feasible.
So they put focuses. So if you have a major injury, a fatality, a complaint to you are a special industry that they're focusing on, so agriculture right now for heat exhaustion, they just have one in Florida. So you're going to see them pop out just for that purpose. Most times you will see them if someone gets hurt, and you will see them if an employee complains. And that is when you don't want to see them.
Tyler Robertson:
How much do the states play a role? Like South Carolina DHEC, I'm assuming every state's got their own agency.
Thomas Clark:
It really comes down to you have federal OSHA, which is through the president, and they have a cabinet. So a state can say, "We want to make our own plan." And all what they do is they make the same requirements, and they can make them more stringent than federal. So California, classic example, they're very stringent on environmental, because they have a lot of environmentally sensitive areas. So they're very, very strict. They way exceed federal requirements. But the bare minimum, you have to meet federal. Now some of the more conservative states throw up their hands and say, "We're going to let the federal government just manage it so we don't have to put the money toward it."
Tyler Robertson:
Sounds very similar, we're doing this whole emission tampering detection thing. And every state kind of does different things and a lot of funding issues going on.
Thomas Clark:
Same thing on the EPA, if you want to have a federally run or you can have it state run.
Tyler Robertson:
I had no idea there were state level EPAs until recently. I always thought it federal.
Thomas Clark:
Yep. South Carolina DHEC decides to manage, but they make it more stringent, because we have marine areas and we're near big cities, so there's a lot more pollutants to control.
Tyler Robertson:
Well, those are all great. I know you got some kind of low hanging fruit stuff we wanted to get through here. So why don't we go through the first one or two.
Thomas Clark:
The first one we'll talk about is going to be recordkeeping. Recordkeeping is kind of the bare minimum. So when an OSHA inspector arrives on site, when they present their badge, they're going to bring to a conference room and they're going to ask for records. And if your first response is, "Ah, I don't know."
Tyler Robertson:
Are these employee records? Or are these policy and procedures and
Thomas Clark:
This is solely injury records. It's called your OSHA 300 log. This is what we talked about the other day. So you can go online through the federal site, and you can look up your business code of what you produce, what you do, but most of you in this industry are going to have to comply. And then you can get the form as a PDF or an Excel that you can type in. But it is basically just a simple form that if you have 10 plus more employees that you have to every year document your injuries. And they put thresholds out there and I gave you a cheat sheet on the USB drive that, for example, if it goes beyond first aid. So they get stitches, they get a splint with metal in it, any of that type of things, it becomes what we call a recordable incident.
If they miss work, if you transfer their job, if you have a fatality, amputations, there's a lot of different criteria that are in there. From there you're required to post that log pretty much from a certain date, it's usually from that February to April timeframe, and it has to be in the public place. And then you keep those logs for a certain number of years, but they're going to ask to see your three previous years.
Also, they're going to ask, if you have an employee get injured, you have seven days from that injury notification to put it on your log. So if you do not do that, and then you present it to an OSHA inspector and you haven't marked it, you just hit yourself with a violation right there.
Tyler Robertson:
So do they get fines for violations? Or are they warning tickets? Or how do they do that?
Thomas Clark:
They do. So the fines have actually been recently adjusted for inflation.
Tyler Robertson:
Of course, yeah.
Thomas Clark:
They're like $12,000. And if you are willful, so if someone like myself or you knew that you did something bad and you hid it, it can go up to a hundred plus thousand dollars. Most times OSHA's willing to wheel and deal and negotiate at the table, and they cut it down to three or $4,000. But you never want to be at that route. You never want to start off with a finding. That's like, there's no going back. The rabbit starts digging. They're going to start peeling that onion back looking for more. So that recordkeeping is huge.
Now I will say every state has an OSHA training institute, so our region four is at NC State and Georgia Tech. They offer a very cheap eight hour recordkeeping class for like 200 bucks, that you can go and state people come and teach you how to do the recordkeeping for very, very cheap. You don't need to pay giant boo koos amount of money to JJ Keller, or some of the other big names for software, if you're just a small company. Take a class, read about it. They try to make it as easy, because that's the biggest thing that people struggle with is recordkeeping.
Tyler Robertson:
You mentioned JJ Keller, and as a business owner, I get these emails every year, "Oh, you're not in compliance, you need to get the new poster. You need to buy the new book. You need to buy the whatever." Do I really have to buy that stuff every year from these people?
Thomas Clark:
JJ Keller, they get a lot of hate in my world, but I actually gave you some of their material, because they're great for people that need an off the shelf solution. However, it doesn't wave a magic wand and says you're fully in compliance. For example, chemicals, you have to train the ones in your site. But they do offer you a off the shelf, without having the deal with a lot of hassle back and forth. You get a good DVD, good videos, written documentation, and training, so that for most small companies is more than enough.
And if you're smart you make copies of the materials they give you, and then for a thousand bucks you are in compliance and showing compliance. Showing compliance to an understaffed agency goes a long ways, because they don't want to find more problems and have to put more resources on a problem. So JJ Keller's is great for small businesses. But for companies that can afford it and make that customized training that fits, they'll have a lot better training success in their injuries and their retention and everything will show.
Tyler Robertson:
I always just felt like they were kind of selling stuff you can get for free anyway on some of the websites, just kind of repackaging it and being like, "Buy [inaudible 00:16:54]-
Thomas Clark:
In the safety world, everything's existed for 50 years. So the creativity aspect has diminished. Everything is stolen and retyped, reimagined, rehashed, so they're selling you generic knowledge that's out there. That's one of the things that I work on providing to small businesses for very low costs, or coming to things like this, educating, because sometimes even that thousand dollars is a lot of money to spend, when you can go on OSHA's website and get training PowerPoints with the same materials, and you just have to lecture it.
Tyler Robertson:
We get that new poster every year that has a minimum wage and everything. Guys, I don't think this is changed like 15 years here
Thomas Clark:
No.
Tyler Robertson:
... but we keep buying a new one every single year.
Thomas Clark:
Really the only thing in South Carolina that's really important is to make sure you have your posters, but also your workers comp poster. But LLR puts it for free on their website that you can print out. So sometimes a quick Google search is all what you need to you can hire, there's a lot of consulting companies out there that sell you like a one package, and then they baby your stuff. They may spend like an hour a month making sure that you're meeting the bare minimum. But what you put into safety, you get out. So they say, "For every dollar you spend you get $3 in return," type of thing.
Tyler Robertson:
Yeah. Makes sense. All right, so we got recordkeeping. What's the next one on the list?
Thomas Clark:
The next big one is going to be our what we call hazardous communications. And this is huge, because it becomes a great burden to employees and employers. So whenever you hire an employee, you have the responsibility to train them on the chemicals in their area, explain what PPE you're using, how you use that PPE, and what they do in case of emergency. You as the employer have a responsibility to conduct a chemical inventory of your work site, and identify anything that falls underneath OSHA's physical and health hazards. From there, with that chemical inventory, you have to provide safety data sheets for that. That is another marketing/spend a bunch of money type of thing.
Tyler Robertson:
MSDS websites and [inaudible 00:18:59]-
Thomas Clark:
Yes. So Vector Solutions or something like that is the big one. MSDS online is what they were called. It's like $10,000, can be. It's very expensive and then they charge you per user sometimes or site. So when I worked at the agency, South Carolina DHEC, I had 90 plus sites I was managing, and they wanted me to pay three grand for each site. The state's poor, we can't afford that. We can barely afford one. So everything has to be accessible. So safety data sheets have to be accessible to employees, wherever they're at in the field, working. If they have a question, it has to be accessible. So that turns into a huge selling thing that a lot of companies sell.
From there, if you change anything, you have to retrain. You also have to have a written program. So you have to have a document that you can hand over and say, "This is what we're doing," so that again adds special knowledge that people consider. You also have to make sure that you're documenting everything. So there's JJ Keller, again, sells the beautiful GHS posters with all the labels and stuff. For small companies, sometimes I tell them to buy that, stick it on the wall. So if an OSHA inspector comes in you can say, "This is what we do training. Whenever we hire, this is what we walk through and give them examples." So it's very affordable.
From there, though, hazards communication really starts coming in a problem, because it's so easy to miss something. How many chemicals do you have in a work truck? I don't know, if you stop that AutoZone, because you need something right away
Tyler Robertson:
Yeah, got to get some new starting fluid.
Thomas Clark:
Bam, you got a new chemical, that's hazardous and highly flammable, and it's reactive. So it comes into an easy way for OSHA to start throwing punches. I encourage, out of this one, there are free programs, so I always turn people to the North Carolina Department of Labor site. They have free OSHA programs, it's a Word document, and it has a fill in the blank. So you can literally, for free, fill in the blanks and it makes a hazardous communication
Tyler Robertson:
And you're compliant then.
Thomas Clark:
You're compliant there. The next one is, as a business owner we talked about managing risk. For the love of anything, please do not have 300 different chemicals on a work truck. Five different brands of a starter fluid. This comes down to cost control, which is a big part of business risk, procurement, and making sure that you are managing what your employees can access. So if you can keep your brand a break cleaner, your brand of sparks... whatever you have, keep it down to one, your SDS sheet turns from three to 500 down to 50. And that makes it so much easier.
For me when I deal with small business that can't afford a lot, every business normally has a website. So if you can make a portal that employees can log into through their phones, and then you have a dropbox with all your safety data sheets that you keep updated, they have remote access right there. And then you keep, for me, I always keep paper copies, or it's not really required, but you just need to have it accessible to employees. If you can show that you have it accessible, easy, most employees already have a website, so they can easily add something, and you have your plan. And when you hire an employee. You just train them. Training takes 15, 20 minutes, and you have written documentation of it, you met your goals.
Tyler Robertson:
I mean what I'm learning here is it doesn't need to be complex and expensive.
Thomas Clark:
No.
Tyler Robertson:
There are simple, inexpensive ways, even free ways to manage this.
Thomas Clark:
Always keep it simple. The kiss method.
Tyler Robertson:
So I got another question for you, and this is really specific but I'm just thinking of my industry. Truck broke down the side of the road or an excavator broke down, blows a hydraulic line, blows a fuel line, and now you got fuel or oil all over the ground. Is there things they should be doing in those situations to clean that up properly? Because I can imagine most people in our industry just kind of leave it there, or brush some dirt over it, is there something you're supposed to do? Or where's the limit, when it comes to..
Thomas Clark:
It really comes down your state? So we're starting to fall a little bit in the EPA side. So you do have responsibility to manage oil, and that kind of follows underneath what they call circle of law. We're not going to go down that rabbit hole today, but it is good environment of responsibility and I always encourage people to carry spill kits that can manage up to 25 gallons, and that you brush stuff on. But I will tell you as a firefighter, I've used sand on the side of the road or dirt to cleaning up so many car wreck type things. But really when you start going over that 20, 30, especially 55 gallons, that's when you have to remediate. You can be found liable, in the sense, because oil is a pollutant.
So small spills, as long as you make an effort to clean and remove, you're good. But you still have to provide employees the training of what to do. Hydraulic fluid can get really hot, so it can cause scalding issues. So, again, the PPE requirement comes in. Don't be like a company that I just worked with that they had a spill of that type object and they gave their employees mops and nitro gloves that burned, whenever they did anything. So you do have a responsibility, and this is where I encourage you build standard operating procedures and there's templates all over online. For my employees and companies I work with, one page. Here's what you do in a spill, it's in a binder in the truck. So we have all our emergency information for them when they have an emergency. Here's what they're do in this spill, and your responsibilities. And again that kind of meets your training requirements, so they have a reference to go back to.
Tyler Robertson:
You're like a wealth of knowledge in this space. It's fascinating. Do you have another low hanging fruit one that you wanted to talk about?
Thomas Clark:
PPE, this is one that a lot of people struggle with.
Tyler Robertson:
I never even heard the acronym before COVID.
Thomas Clark:
Yeah, so it is what we call personal protective equipment. So my world, again, I manage risk, I'm a risk manager. I don't like this term safety, because no one wants to deal with you, when you say safety manager. We look at we want to eliminate risk. So the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health NIOSH, they go out and they make something called a hierarchy of controls. And what that is that they want to eliminate the hazard, that's the best way to reduce risk, just get rid of the hazard. If that's not possible, we're going to substitute the hazard out for something less hazards, hazardous chemical to a non-hazardous chemical. If that's not possible, we're going to put a guard on it. We're going to engineer something to basically keep you from touching whatever the hazard is.
Finally, if that don't work, we're going to tell you not to touch it. That's an administrative control. We're going to provide some training or policy. But then, finally, the very bottom and the most dangerous is,"Hey, I can't guarantee you're not going to have contact with this, it's going to harm you. So I'm going to put body armor on you, and call it personal protective equipment to give it a better name and go forth."
So a lot of employees don't think about it that way. They just think it's an obnoxious, overbearing thing that my employer requires me to wear. In actuality, the employer's basically stating, "I can't protect you from this, so I have to strap something on you. Good luck," type thing.
Tyler Robertson:
I never thought of it as the least effective thing is PPE.
Thomas Clark:
Correct.
Tyler Robertson:
Right?
Thomas Clark:
Yeah.
Tyler Robertson:
My mind never worked in that way.
Thomas Clark:
Correct. So with PPE, it's expensive, and we found another huge market that they can bill business owners to get stuff out. PPE is very expensive. Employers, they don't like paying for it. Employees lose it, they damage it, they get stolen, it gets broken, it gets thrown in the back of the trucks, it gets dirty in fields when you're working on things. Gloves, especially, it's a big hassle. So OSHA basically states that you must train your employees in PPE and how to put it on and its limitations and all that other realms that comes to using an object. From there, you, the employer, also, have to access the workplace and document, written documentation of the hazards in the workplace. So we actually call that a hazard assessment.
So this is something that is basically, you're documenting, okay, if you're working on this type vehicle, this is how it can hurt. You theorize in your brain, this is how I'm protecting you based on that kind of pyramid that we talked about. So, okay, you're going to lock something out. That's an administrative
policy of locking out, and I'm going to put engineer, by putting some barrier to keep that thing from moving to hurt you. So everything goes back to this triangle, but you, the employer, have to have documentation.
Again, there are numerous templates online and they are called job hazardous analysis, JHAs. These are usually something you one and done and then you just review them. A truck isn't going to change that much over the years, so if you got a few for your common task, what you're doing, that's what you do, and you got your PPE. From there, this is where business owners get upset is OSHA mandates the employer must pay for the PPE. And that can come down to shoes when there's a lot of little rules around shoes.
Tyler Robertson:
I mean steel toed boots, yeah, I mean, I get it, right?
Thomas Clark:
Yeah. And this is crazy, but my employees, they just tell me when they need new shoes, because I'm not going to babysit shoes. Employee with happy feet are a productive employee. When you have sore toes, kind of like the military, you're not going to be very productive and mind on task. From there you are also required to basically document everything in this realm, usually with some type of policy. What I just encourage for business owners is don't think of PPE as a major cost, in a sense, which it is expensive.
But I'll give you an example from South Carolina DHEC is, I had a lab that does testing and they have what they do pipetting, so they squeeze a little thing to fill valves. And they were doing this 90% of their job, and so they got an injury called pipette thumb, the surgery to repair that was about 30 grand. I walked into the lab, and I was like, "How many people have had this surgery?" And what they would do is they would hire someone, pipette them to death, and when they were broken, move them to a different role in the lab and hire a new person.
So they were up to three or four people over the last few years, and then the people would just quit. The robot, to do it automatically, was 18,000. So you're going to pay through injuries, basically, and morale and employees not happy, not taking care of, they're going to leave. You spend money and training, which is super expensive, having to bring someone up to your culture and your speed. So PPE is actually the cheaper, it's a direct cost, but you don't really see the indirect, until you get that worker's comp premium bill, and you start seeing how much money is going out the door.,
Tyler Robertson:
So I know in our world our guys are on ladders all the time, they're up high on trucks, on trailers, up on equipment. Talk to me a little bit about fall protection.
Thomas Clark:
So fall protection is where it really starts getting deep, and this is where OSHA does not do the best. They refer out to those private standards I talked about. Fall protection is the hardest thing to keep up with. We start getting in the world of special training, and OSHA starts throwing some terms around like qualified person and competent person and authorized user. So all these terms start swirling. For fall protection, we're going to really hammer it down like four points for people. If your employee is working more than four feet off the ground, it is in their best interest to be tied off. Now I know other industries have steel rectors and construction have different requirements, but most falls over four feet that I've personally responded to don't come out with successful outcomes.
Tyler Robertson:
Well, just a quick side story there is, when I was growing up, my dad had a company and they had an electrician that worked for him for years, 50 feet in the air doing stuff in buildings, and this concrete plants. And the guy retired, literally, was up on the third step of a ladder trimming a branch off of some trees, fell, broke his back, paralyzed from the waist down. So it doesn't take much of a fall
Thomas Clark:
No.
Tyler Robertson:
... for bad things to happen.
Thomas Clark:
Amazon just had a fatality at three and a half feet.
Tyler Robertson:
That's crazy.
Thomas Clark:
And it's just because the center of gravity and where you turn and you land on your head, is kind of how it is. So just remember, tying off is important. So providing your employees that opportunity.
Number two is you have to have someone in your company that is actually trained, deeply trained in fall protection, and we usually call that a competent person. And that person can identify hazards, can select the proper fall protection to correct and reduce the risk to that hazard, and also conduct your inspections that are required and document it. And also manage your fall protection written program that you have. So this competent person, there is some cost to it, and this is where I encourage you to go to, I personally only use DBI Sala or Miller, the big name companies, because they put a lot of money, investment in research. The stuff you buy at Lowe's is good but it won't last you nearly as long.
But DBI and Miller have a roving kind of training class and they got a little mobile where they can, basically, do mock falls with dummies and you can see the equipment work. They have all the equipment for you to inspect, and then their experts will help you build your program, if needed, to help you pick out what will work and will not work. So those resources are a lot better than going off the shelf to like Lowe's and not knowing.
My biggest thing, when I come to major incidences, is you'll see that someone has fallen and the gear that they have picked to mitigate that fall was too long, and they still hit the ground before their fall protection deploys. And that's very common with the shock absorbing lanyards, kind of the stretchy bands that are out there, that if you're 12 feet, you're six feet tall, your lanyard is six feet, that's 12 feet automatically
Tyler Robertson:
That's not going to help.
Thomas Clark:
... you're not going to help. So it's very, very important you have that competent person.
The next one, again, and I just kind of hinted at it, is know your work. This is part of your job hazard analysis, we talked about with PPE is, what is the distance they're going to fall? If you select for example what an industry's known as a yo-yo or self-retracting lifeline, it's basically like a line that's on a retractable wheel, and you fall, and it has a brake, is that wheel allowed to be used at your feet or on your back? So picking out your equipment, but knowing your distance of your work is critical. For my employees, at my facility, I basically do everything at six foot.
So I know that this SRL is what they call them, self-retracting lifeline, will stop an employee in two and a half feet. I know that for my employees, anything about 10 feet, they're generally stopped. From that, we have to use other methods, ladders, platforms, and other things to mitigate that risk. It's something we work very hard in the making where employees don't have to think about it just is there for them.
Tyler Robertson:
I guess I want to talk about responsibility a little bit when it comes to safety. So as you're talking here, I'm going through my head thinking of all the things that have happened that I've been around with. And I'm guessing anyone in my industry has had similar things. I know people who have lost fingers from picking up heavy
Thomas Clark:
Things.
Tyler Robertson:
... things, and trying to catch them, people that things fall on their feet and had problems, and back problems and all these things. I know of people at local companies, literally, been killed with the trailer and the truck back into each other, and they're caught in the middle there. I mean, machines don't know any different, typically. This is big heavy stuff moving around. So as we're talking here is all that's responsibility on the employer?
Thomas Clark:
Yep.
Tyler Robertson:
Is there some on the employee to be like, "Hey, this isn't safe"? Or is it a 100% on the employer's side? Should they speak up?
Thomas Clark:
100%.
Tyler Robertson:
What... Yeah
Thomas Clark:
100%.
Tyler Robertson:
Where does that land?
Thomas Clark:
So the employer, you can't claim ignorance, is what it's called. These rules have been around for 50 years, most of them. When you go into business, you have to do your research. You have to get a business license. You have to get insurance. And this is where, why today, and why I work so hard is bringing safety out. Everyone knows safety, but they don't understand risk management. Most times, when I get called for consulting, is to respond to a major incident.
OSHA's there, the last one I did, the company put out about $3 million. I don't know many small businesses that can manage that. Let alone lose the one that we technicians to a back injury for three months. That's crippling. So managing that risk and meeting all these compliance, this is basically an employee's right, is the easiest way to say it. They have a right to a safe workplace.
That's why OSHA was founded. So you, as a business owner, have the duty to provide a safe workplace, and even if it's not in these standards, OSHA can still cite you underneath the general duty clause, which means that you basically did not meet your obligation to provide a safe workplace to that employee.
Tyler Robertson:
I mean, that makes sense. They can't make a rule or a law for every little thing
Thomas Clark:
Little thing.
Tyler Robertson:
... everybody does, right?
Thomas Clark:
Nothing passes anymore in OSHA.
Tyler Robertson:
Yeah, I get it with the whole government and everything. And I know you got a Mike Rowe thing on here, it looks like I'm one of these things, where you talk about safety third.
Thomas Clark:
I know you like him, so
Tyler Robertson:
Yeah, I just had him on the podcast. I saw the Mike Rowe thing, so I got to ask, what's that about?
Thomas Clark:
Well, I know that you like him, so I put Mike Rowe on there because he always has his famous safety third. So in my world, there's a big thing, human organizational performance I mentioned earlier. Too many times in safety, we work to control the employee, we work to control the employee through their behaviors, and we penalize when we don't see it going right. So Mike Rowe has his famous thing where he likes to say kind of safety third, and where that hammers is that it is on the employee to actually watch out for their safety. And I actually tell my employees that, "I am not there to smack your hands when you do something stupid, basically. You have to take personal responsibilities. I try my hardest, I make awesome policies. I give you PPE. I give you training,.I give you 24 hour access to my phone to call me with questions."
But ultimately it is the employee's responsibility to follow it. And the safety third becomes down to where every company says, "Safety a priority." As soon as I hear that, I'm like, "Next." Safety is not a priority, making money for business to be more productive, more profitable, that is the American way. So safety is not first, is not second, because that's quality. You want to make a good quality product for people to buy. And then safety kind of follows in that realm. So, ultimately, it's on the employee to make sure that their rights are being met, and that they're watching out and following what their employer provided, because the employer has done the due diligence to examine their workplace. Safety should be of value, it should be built in the culture. And that's where I specialize in that leadership training is making it a value for companies.
Tyler Robertson:
If there's somebody working somewhere and they feel like this is just unsafe, what should they first do? And how do they escalate that if they feel nothing's happening?
Thomas Clark:
And this is where it gets controversial, and you can report to OSHA, but most of the times you don't really get the response you're seeking, unless it's something very major. What they do is a contact the employer and they say, "XYZ happened," and then there's a fear of retaliation, which it does occur, because then it's on another agency to enforce that. I always encourage that you have written documentation. It's kind of the same for your harassment and discrimination. You make written documentation and recordkeeping to whoever's in charge. You also have the ability to do a stop work that every employer and employee can stop work that they feel is unsafe. You're not there to go home in a casket, basically. You're there to earn a paycheck to provide for your family so you can meet your own goals and dream, and the business owner is going to use your labor to make their own goals and dreams, basically.
So there's no one forcing you, in a sense, to do the work. But if you just come and you complain and complain, and it's not documented, it doesn't really give you good teeth. If you're showing that the employer is having neglect, so there's a huge thing right now with bathroom access. That on some poultry processing lines and some warehouse business that people are wearing diapers, because they're not giving adequate time
Tyler Robertson:
I heard that it was Amazon, like, "We don't get enough bathroom breaks." [inaudible 00:40:18]-
Thomas Clark:
I wasn't going to shame them out.
Tyler Robertson:
I mean, I've seen the news. It's in mainstream media.
Thomas Clark:
To some of the delivery companies peeing in a... because you can't get a bathroom. Documentation becomes critical, because, ultimately, sometimes companies need to be held accountable. And I know that this country sometimes struggle with regulatory, but that's their purpose, is we like our rights, all the OSHA regs are rights that we don't have in other countries. I just came from Bogota. Oh, you want to talk about some safety stuff there. But you always are about, "I want my rights. I want my rights to be inspected. I want my rights taken away." Well, make your employer meet those rights too. And, ultimately, if you're not getting an answer and you got written documentation, you can submit it online anonymously. But with small businesses that's not a term, everyone knows everyone. But you can submit it, and force action.
Just realize there are consequences and they could be good or negative. I'm not disencouraging reporting, but always try to work in-house first before you air dirty laundry, because the OSHA inspection is a loose cannon. You don't know how that inspector is going to gear what the response is to what can the business manage. Sometimes businesses have what we call risk acceptance. You, as a business owner, have a risk that you're willing to take on that you tell your employees, "We're going to do this and this is the risk I accept." And that's your culture, that's your values. Sometimes they don't match up with employees. So they may think this industry's too dangerous, then you need to go somewhere else that the risk matches to your personal integrity, ethics, and morality preference. And that's kind of where the realm of all that kind of squeezes in.
Tyler Robertson:
No, I appreciate all that. And I'm sure there's people out there that feel unsafe, so giving a little guidance there is great. So I got kind of one last question for you here. I mean, it sounds like you've been around this for a while. You consult with companies, you've been around the world. If I had to say, man, what's the worst situation you've ran across or been called into? Is there some that pop in your mind? Or is it just kind of all blend together at this point?
Thomas Clark:
For me, I can walk into a facility and within two or three minutes see how well their culture and value is. What I encourage for, and my biggest standout is, is poor management and poor leadership. So many times you see managers and leaders that have never been trained. Leadership is a skill. Management is a skill that has to be honed and developed. Safety will never happen if you do not have upper leadership support. So go on Indeed, look every two or three months, and you'll see the same companies posting for a safety person. And that is because they think safety guy makes safety. It's actually your line supervisors that make the safety. So when I walk into a facility and there's a fatality or major incident, I can immediately tell that there's no leadership buy-in. That it's all talk, no action. So it does blend together, but that is the common theme is poor upper leadership support.
Tyler Robertson:
So is it a lack of caring? Or is it just a lack of not knowing they should have been doing things?
Thomas Clark:
Most of its caring, because if you're having retention issues, if you're getting employees hurt, that's what the recordkeeping is, is solely to build a trend data, forcing you to look at your trends. And if you're ignoring that, you got three back injuries, you maybe need to evaluate what's going on. Lack of knowledge, again, comes down to the care. And I can tell you care a lot about your company and you put a lot of effort in the finding avenues and making your employees successful. But that breeds where your retention is not going to be like companies are suffering with a turnaround. So safety bleeds kind of into the QC, it bleeds into the production. I always consider a true safety person to be like a doctor. It gives you the heartbeat of a company, it helps you check in, and it's a problem solver. It's not a burden.
Tyler Robertson:
Well, Thomas, I know we've been talking here a bit about everything and we had a lot of notes, we've had conversations before this and some emails and everything. Anything big I left off that you wanted to make sure we covered about safety?
Thomas Clark:
I just encourage that you don't blame employees anymore. Blame fixes nothing. I encourage employees to report. Because there's a huge disconnect between management and people doing the job, and that produces a lot of frustration, because management tried to tell the people doing the job way, "No, wait, that's not how it's actually done." So encourage reporting, encourage near miss, where someone almost got hurt, but never discipline for that.
I see that a lot and it just immediately kills all safety efforts. So there's a difference between motivation and influencing. Motivation is there whenever there's a stimulus or a stick to keep it going. But once you take that away, motivation dies. Whenever you have inspiration, you're driving organically, it's going to bloom naturally. So when you say, "I want you to be safe," and you do it in your actions, people are going to follow that, and replicate it, and then it gets easier and easier.
Tyler Robertson:
So I had, literally, just yesterday, me and another employee, a manager here, we were talking about, we're having situations, some departments and some turnover. I'm like, "Eventually, you got to look yourself in the mirror, and realize what it is." And they said, "You know, Tyler, when you point the finger at somebody, just realize there's three fingers pointing back at you." And that's usually what it is. So very well said and everything. And I know, again, I hope if the audience got anything out of this, you know what you're talking about here. You do consulting work on the side. You're well versed in this. If people want to reach out to you, they got some questions, they want to learn more, whatever it may be, where can they find you?
Thomas Clark:
So my consulting business is Pathfinder Safety Consultant, also, encourage on LinkedIn. A lot of times people just have a question and I don't mind answering questions. For me, it's like my duty to give out knowledge as much as possible. Most times I turn you to free resources or I turn you to your state OSHA office, because they have free consultants at your state OSHA office that are not in enforcement. So you can reach out to me if you want programs and plans. Again, I'm always willing and able to help.
Tyler Robertson:
Yeah, I can speak to that, because we did talk on LinkedIn. You sent me a bunch of stuff. You showed up here at my doorstep with binders and flash drive. I was like, "Man, this is great." And you came on the podcast with me. So I really appreciate it, and we're going to wrap up this episode. Again, thank you for coming on.
We end every episode with diagnostics, done right. But really you got to take care of your customers and your employees. You got to make sure they're safe. And you started the episode, Thomas did, it's de-risking company as well. And it's making a better workplace and retention and all these things that play into it. It's a piece of the puzzle. Reach out to Thomas if you have questions. He has definitely the heart of a teacher. He wants to help people. He's passionate about this.
So thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. Like, comment, subscribe, share all that goodness. We'll catch you on the next episode.
Leave a comment