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SafeTalk with SafeStart
SafeTalk with SafeStart
S13Ep14: Leading by Example: The Metallus SafeLead Journey
What happens when a multigenerational steel company with deep-rooted traditions transforms its approach to safety leadership?
The results extended far beyond incident rates, creating ripple effects throughout the organization's culture and performance. Take a look behind the scenes of Metallus' remarkable journey with SafeLead. This candid conversation reveals how the frontline leadership process changed not only their organization but their personal lives as well.
Host: Danny Smith
Guests: Andrew Bisset and Brent Vogt of Metallus
Danny Smith Host
00:08
Hello and welcome once again to SafeTalk with SafeStart. I'm your host, Danny Smith. Today we're continuing our series about SafeLead, a process that addresses gaps in frontline leadership by providing new perspectives on human factors, safety conversations and really just how to lead by example. And with us today are Brent Vogt and Andrew Bissett from Metallus. We're going to ask them to just share a bit about their journey with SafeLead, and not only how it's impacted the organization, but also how it's impacted them personally. I think that's a great thing for us to have a conversation about. So why don't we start with some introductions? If you don't mind, just tell us a bit about yourself, about your role with the company, how long you've been there, and just a bit about each of you. So, I guess we can go alphabetical. Andrew, you want to go first.
Andrew Bisset Guest
00:59
Yeah, thanks for this opportunity. My name is Andrew Bissett. I'm the Vice President of Engineering, Reliability and Manufacturing Excellence here at Metallus. I've been here for a little over three years and 24 years in the steel business, really all over the United States, a little bit in Europe, always breaking and putting things back together. That's who I am.
Danny Smith Host
01:21
I love it. It's a great way to put it, Brent. How about?
Brent Vogt Guest
01:23
Yeah, so my name is Brent Vogt. I've been with Metallus for 29 years, been mostly in our operations sector, but more recently I'm in our manufacturing excellence group and I've been working a lot with SafeStart and SafeLead.
Danny Smith Host
01:41
Very good. So, as we get started, share a little bit about the company itself, but also if you would, as we're doing that, tell us a bit about what the culture was there before you implemented the SafeLead process.
Andrew Bisset Guest
01:56
Yeah, maybe from a corporation perspective, we're here in Canton Ohio, we have facilities also in Southwest Ohio and also kind of outside Asheville, North Carolina. From a cultural perspective we had, prior to SafeLead being taken on here, we kind of had a culture of that was kind of getting. They've been here forever, they've been here for a long time, the tenure was strong, and you had that kind of legacy that we always kind of knew what needed to be done from a safety perspective and as a result of that you know you have maybe really good craftsmanship. You have you've been through the war stories a couple of times and you know how to kind of stay out of harm's way.
02:44
But as that workforce is starting to age and retirement is starting to be more on the horizon, those habits that took decades to be made and found and really perfected is now being replaced by less tenured individuals coming in. And when these less tenured individuals coming in, they were somewhat hesitant to say, hey, you know what, we can be better than that. I might not know how to recognize the hazards, I might not understand the line of fire, because I don't have that legacy and that history as maybe my predecessors did. And with that type of mindset. Some of the individuals might be hesitant also to say you know what? We could be better than this, how about we do this versus that, et cetera. Kind of the mindset of the company and how we kind of approach safety.
Danny Smith Host
03:37
You know it was always interesting to me there. Metallus has been so ingrained in that community there and as you shared with me back when I was on site with you back a few years back it was, you know, literally you have people that they've worked there. Their uncles worked here, their dads worked here, their granddads worked here. So, does that play into that culture as well?
Brent Vogt Guest
04:01
I think. So, you know, speaking as being a fourth-generation person working here, it's one of those things that, yeah, I mean you just kind of like a mindset and it was a culture, and you know it was one of the biggest employers. So, I think, as we walk through this journey and as we have with you and with SafeStart and SafeLead, I think that it's changed things right. It's one of those catalysts that, hey, this is different, this is new, but it was also good.
Danny Smith Host
04:44
What were some of the challenges that you faced when implementing SafeLead? I mean, obviously you're a very large organization and I know that in and of itself was a challenge, but what were some of the big obstacles there that you faced just as you started rolling this out and as you continued the journey?
Andrew Bisset Guest
05:06
Maybe I started with start with the mindset. You get defaulted into a condition that says, hey, a lot of safety incidents and hazards are all condition-based. They are, they could be condition-based stuff really does impact safety.
05:22
But one of the things that was challenging at first was how does mindset kind of deal with safety, performance and the execution of doing work safely every single day? And that mindset comes from home, that mindset comes from distractions, that mindset comes from complacency, that mindset comes from tiredness, and how does that impact one's professional career and the well-being of their safety inside the company? But probably more importantly, how do you take those lessons that you learn from work and then bring it home? How do you do maintenance on the roof correctly at home to the same level of rigor and detail that you do at work? That was one of those kinds of challenges that we had to kind of institutionalize to really say, hey, you know what safety is, not just when you swipe in, and you swipe out. It's a 24-7 game that you're always having to compete against.
Brent Vogt Guest
06:28
I agree with Andrew wholeheartedly. You know, when I went through safely and I went through some of the different things and then, talking with um, some of the individuals that work with SafeStart. It was eye-opening because you know, if I went out to trim the yard or do whatever when you, when you're at home, um, if I didn't have safety glasses, I just went and did it anyway. I actually stopped myself right after going through safely saying, ok, this isn't right, don't do it. So, it was a lot of just that stuff and storytelling, right as you go through this and you share with people, right, and you get people to think a little bit. And so, I think, in a lot of ways, with our safety shares and some of the things that we do before meetings, we're sharing those moments not just at work but we're also sharing them from home.
Danny Smith Host
07:09
Was there a specific takeaway for both of you after you went through SafeLead? Just a personal takeaway from this.
Andrew Bissett Guest
07:16
Yeah, this is my second company that I've done SafeStart with, so I think in. I think when I first got kind of introduced to SafeStart, one of the my first takeaways was you, you. I came up onto a scene where somebody was tied off, but not tied off correctly, and there were three people around this individual kind of handing tools and parts up to them as they were going to do something. And I got up to the scene and it wasn't the fault of the individual that was tied off. The team realized it was more of the fault of the whole body of work. Here we failed to recognize the hazard.
08:02
The individual was complacent, the individual got there and with complacency we have to lean on each other a heck of a lot more to really identify that complacency, because it's one of the hardest things to find. And what SafeStart kind of taught me and I see this in my leadership style and when I'm out on the shop floor is the mission to go out there and disrupt complacency. When complacency happens in the workforce, bad things can happen. But if you're aggressive and you find that complacency and you seek out that complacency, and you're humbled when somebody recognizes it in yourself, and now you have to, almost, like, pay them back as a commitment. Now you're in that full circle. Now you see that cultural change. Now you see that cultural change. Now you see that continuous improvement, that you know what. We're all on this team together trying to start the day and end the day in a safe and good condition.
Danny Smith Host
08:58
Yeah, we talk a lot about, you know, obviously, complacency on an individual level, but we certainly see how that develops in teams as well, and that's kind of, I think, about something that you kind of were leading to there. You know, it's easy for a work team or just a small work group or, you know, department or what have you, to have that complacency come in as an organization as well, right, be it the individual work group or the larger organization as a whole, right. Brent any specific examples of the SafeLead skills, the leadership skills that you're seeing in real time there, and, I guess as well, your personal takeaway as well. Sorry, I didn't give you a chance to answer that as well, you know.
Brent Vogt Guest
09:39
I guess one of my personal takeaways. Really, I embrace the storytelling right. I've been here for a number of years, seen a lot of things, um, good and bad and it was just it's sitting down and it's talking with individuals and talking about events or things that could happen and talking through that, through stories and so that's something that I do quite a bit now in my journeys throughout the plant plants, um, but that that was a big takeaway for me.
Andrew Bisset Guest
10:07
Yeah, anything specific that either you can think of, where you've seen those skills being used either by yourself or by other supervisors in real time out in the plant, yeah, yeah, one of the neatest things that we've seen in our cultural change since SafeLead and SafeStart kind of came in at Metallus was every one of our meetings starts off with a safety share, and the safety share is a self-reflection, really looking in the mirror and saying this is what happened today to me, and I think one of the ones that resonates in my head was a team member that had a son get like a Metabo blade stuck in his safety glasses at home, and it was the safety share that was about. You know what, if I didn't, if I wouldn't have slowed him down to say you know what? You better go put your safety glasses on and be kind of regimented about it, we would be in a different story. It would have been a heck of a lot worse. We would have been in the ER. He could have lost an eye.
11:19
Psychology where it says hey, how do I take something from the workforce or the professional world, bring it home, apply it at home, makes me better at home, thus it's going to make me better at work. And how do I pay forward and kind of constantly communicate that situation. He was able to help out his son a lot and probably avoided him having a pretty severe injury that could have impacted the rest of his life.
Danny Smith Host
11:51
Yeah, that's a great example and I I think sometimes we are reluctant to have those conversations and that's a part of what SafeLead really talks about is, you know, being intentional about having those conversations, uh, and I think that's a just a great application to that that. You know, sometimes we're reluctant to have those conversations at work, but let's face it, sometimes we're reluctant to have those conversations with our loved ones too, and we really shouldn't be. But yet sometimes we are right.
Andrew Bisset Guest
12:13
Yeah, I think Deric, who's one of our SafeLead kind of instructors, who's become a really good business partner to have within our company. Whenever I've seen him in meetings before when somebody, he would try to get the ball rolling and it's like, hey, anybody have any safety share or a SafeStart story they want to share, and if he gets a radio silence he'll actually challenge them. All right, everybody, look at your hands.
12:37
Tell me about a scar, and then everybody's looking at their hands. The next thing you know the ability to tell a story about a scar teaches that practice. It builds that conditioning that says you know what, looking back, it would have been a heck of a lot worse if that knife would not have slipped that direction instead of that direction. I wouldn't have had just one stitch. I might have been losing a finger.
Danny Smith Host
13:03
Absolutely. I always, uh, when I think about that and asking people to look at their scars, I always have the flashback to that scene from Jaws where they're comparing scars on the boat that night. So, every scar has a story, right, and that's the thing you know. And sometimes we think, okay, well, I don't have a story, but yet our body's kind of proof that we probably have quite a few of them. You know not everybody, but most of us probably do for sure. Anything that surprised either one of you with the organization after you implemented SafeLead.
Brent Vogt Guest
13:35
Right, you know, I see a lot more communication on the floor. I see a lot more people willing to talk and discuss issues and discuss, you know, if they have something that they need. It's been, it's. It's been a real turn for us.
13:50
I think you know personal stories for me, and I've been out on the floor and there's a gentleman that was in our Harrison plant that you know. I talked to him and go out and ask him if he needed anything and time and time again it was no. And more recently, this past summer, I went up to him and, talking to him, asked him if he needed anything, and he's like no, and then start to walk away and he's like wait, you know what, I do need something. And they had changed. We changed the lockout procedure for them and their heater was outside of where he could use it. So, he said I could use a heater.
14:23
You know it's going to be winter soon, so I need something in this pulpit and God knows it's cold here right now. But so, I went to the plant manager, said, hey, here's what this person needs, and we had it, we put it in, we installed it and that person's very happy. So, it's one of those things. It's not just having the conversations but it's following through with what people are asking. I've seen that really kind of grow in the last couple of years.
Danny Smith Host
14:48
That's great, Andrew. What about you? Anything there that you think of as kind of a surprise for you?
Andrew Bisset Guest
14:55
Yeah, the tendency to kind of self-report near misses has probably been one of the biggest things that I'm most impressed with. And what I mean is historically, you know what, if I would have made a mistake or if I would have you know what tripped over a hose that was drug out on a designated walkway, you know what? I wouldn't have reported it. But now you see a culture that says man, we need to find a way not to put that hose across there when we go do this job. And you have an entire team, you have an entire culture, which is almost part of our brand, that says we could be better than that.
15:39
Hey, you know what? Let's cut a trench there, let's put a permanent line underneath that designated walkway, because we run a hose across there every single week to go do the clean out a sump pump. We can make that a permanent line now for just a few dollars more. And we don't. We're just we've completely eliminated that hazard. That's been one of the most impressive things of late. That say I know we could be better, and this is how we do it. It's not just somebody saying a complaint or bringing up an issue. You have an entire team; you have an entire culture. You have a brand that says I'm also bringing solutions to you too.
Danny Smith Host
16:20
You know we see a lot of organizations that struggle with, you know identifying leading metrics in their organizations, and I always think that that's a great one. You know, when you see people, when you see an increase in the number of things that people report themselves, that's a great leading metric for me. When I'm talking with folks and leaders about you know what can we measure for me, when I'm talking with folks and leaders about you know what can we measure other than just the traditional you know, injury rates and things like that I always think that's a wonderful, wonderful metric to look at as you're just trying to identify things. So, you know that's great to see that, that you're getting more of that and not just that you're getting the self-reporting, but then you're doing something with it, and that's the key here as well.
Andrew Bisset Guest
17:01
Right, yeah, I mean. And then connecting it to some of the responsibilities of the business too, to be fiscally profitable and successful in the product or the processes that you inevitably are selling. You get that culture ingrained to report those near misses. You get that culture ingrained to identify ways to become better in the safety front. It's contagious. It cascades into quality; it cascades into reliability. Inevitably it cascades into cost and the next thing you know, you see it in your margins. And it all started with safety. It all started with that hose that's across that designated walkway. And when the men and women on the shop floor they started with that hose that's across that designated walkway. And when the men and women on the shop floor they see that the continuity that's now established that how safety drives business excellence, it comes full circle and everybody wins there.
Danny Smith Host
18:01
Sure, Brent, anything that you would have looked at and possibly done differently with rolling things out.
Brent Vogt Guest
18:07
No, you know, I think, as we implemented SafeLead, you know we had our challenges. We've got turns; we've got different things. But you know, I think, as we started going through this process, I mean, there were people asking when's going to be my turn, when do I get to go through um? So, I again, there's challenges getting everybody through, but we were able to get 99.2 percent of our folks through the entire session, which is, you know, over three different periods, over weeks and um. It works; it works it works well.
Danny Smith Host
18:44
Yeah, yeah, I, I know the scheduling with your group because of the turns, because of everybody coming and going and shifting around, that was a really major thing to pull off and for you to get that level of participation and completion, if you will, with everybody going through the modules, that was just phenomenal and that's really, really solid. I think that also kind of points a bit to the next thing I wanted to touch on, which was I think some of that not only came from being really diligent with the scheduling, but also just the support that you had from senior leadership. Do you mind talking a little bit about that?
Andrew Bissett Guest
19:21
Yeah, I think one of the compliments you know of the way the schedule was laid out, it wasn't tiered base, it wasn't all right. Let's get all the executive team together, let's get the middle management together, let's get the frontline supervisors together and then let's get the hourly employees’ kind of gathered. It was cascaded really from top to bottom. It was this kind of microcosm, which is really who we are as a company, that we're all in this together. So, there's times when I'm going to the SafeLead training as a vice president and the people I'm in there with are supervisors. It allows us to understand the full dichotomy of the initiative that we're on.
Brent Vogt Guest
20:13
And to add to that, I mean it was great because we had everybody, from our CEO down to our supervisors, go through this and, like Andrew said, we mixed it up. We mixed up departments, we mixed up levels of command, we mixed it all up just to say, hey, we're on an even page here and we're going to share stories and we're going to go through this together and it worked.
Danny Smith Host
20:36
I think that was so. Key here is having the interaction of the different levels of people. I think that was just a phenomenal thing to do. That's both of you spoke to that. I think that's just something that was, uh, we see that with organizations that do that, not only with SafeLead training but also with SafeStart training as well with other processes just having that inner interaction that sometimes people don't have with, uh, someone at a different level or a different department in the organization. That's always good. What do you think the organization would look like today versus when you started this? What do you think it would look like if you had not done this process?
Andrew Bisset Guest
21:16
We wouldn't be where we're at from a momentum perspective. The SafeStart, SafeLead methodology was a little bit of a turbo boost. You know it was. We were coming out of COVID. We're eight years after our break with the flagship of the company. We were our own little independent company and trying to make it keep a name for ourselves, and having that little extra boost on the safety front allows us to then transpose that success into other areas of the business and quality and reliability, costs, morale, a lot of the kind of cultural aspects that we're, we're we are continuing on our journey with. Without that SafeStart, that safely kind of approach that we're all in this together and we can do it, we would probably be a little bit further behind and probably not being at the velocity in that pursuit of excellence that we're on right now.
Brent Vogt Guest
22:26
I wholeheartedly agree with Andrew. Being here for 29 years and going through the generations and all the other stuff, we've changed. We've changed for the good and it's eye-opening and it's a great place to be.
Danny Smith: Host
Excellent. Well, thanks again for both of your being here and for just talking a bit about all of the things that we've touched on today about your SafeLead journey. That's our time for today, folks, and thanks again. I really appreciate this. This has been a really engaging conversation for our listeners. Don't forget to check out the other podcasts that we have about SafeLead, as well as the full suite of podcasts we have available on a variety of topics. We're SafeTalk with SafeStart. I'm Danny Smith. Have a great day.