S15Ep9: Shifting Workers Memorial Day From Awareness to Impact

Workers' Memorial Day focuses on workers who lost their lives on the job. A lot of organizations use this day to raise awareness about safety issues, but that doesn't always reach the workers. Impacting workers can do a whole lot more. Join Tim and Abby as they break it all down.

Host: Tim Page-Bottorff

Guest: Abby Ferri

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hey, welcome back to Safe Talk with Safe Start, and I'm your host today, Tim Page Bodarf. And joining me today is my really good friend Abby Ferry for a serious topic this year about Workers' Memorial Day. And that's going to be observed this year on April 28th, which falls on a Tuesday. But I've asked Abby here to give us a discussion because she's really one of the most influential leaders when it comes to activities like this. And in her background with global risk management and worker health and safety, it's been more than 20 years. I'm not even going to give you the years, but it's been a lot. And as a director of the National Safety Council's networks, she's kind of a part of a team that provides unique forums for interactions, which I'm actually a member of on the JLL side. Um, but it provides member companies an enablement. Um, it's just one of those opportunities where you can just participate as a member. And I'll let her give uh give you a uh kind of a background about that in just a minute. But with the other aspects that NSC does, I you know, we take full advantage of that. They provide safety consulting, thought leadership, and they can probably guide your organization um into a better place, which I really, really truly love. So as you can see, I thought she'd be the perfect person to speak on this topic. So Abby, background-wise, holds a master's degree um environmental health and safety and is a certified safety professional. She also has an associate in risk management. I mean, our history is a lot deeper than just her resume. I mean, we could go all the way back to the years at Orange County. I'm thinking 2007, 2008. Um, to me being a guest on her podcast, to speaking together, to working on women's PPE, to volunteering together. I mean, you name it. I could go on and on. And if it's safety, we probably collaborated somewhere down the line on it. So, Abby, welcome to Safe Talk with Safe Start. We're looking forward to you being the best SME in this in this topic. And um, when we thought about it, my thought immediately landed on Abby Ferry. So, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Thank you. Wow, that's quite the introduction, and also it has me going down memory lane a little bit. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

I I was also thinking about memory lane. I just we had several discussions about Orange County, and then we finally connected. And I think from a time frame that was 2010. Um, and then I remember seeing you and Herb sitting at a table at a top golf in Dallas, and I was like, Oh, I'm gonna go talk. We finally need to get connected. And certainly from there, the podcast that you started with the Safety Justice League, and um I I just I actually was talking to Joe Pina about this a couple days ago. She's like, Oh my god, we're just this just the history. Yes, and then I was grateful that we decided to do a session together. I think that was San Antonio 2018. Um, I mean, the there's a lot of history there, but I'm just first of all grateful and honored that you would join us. Um, but thank you. And you deserve an on an intro like that. I the work you've done, we're safety professionals of the year together with the ASS. I just I you're as Lindsay Bell would put it, you're a hop goddess, but you're also a safety goddess. And I just I'm I'm just grateful that you're here. So I love that. Thank you. To give our listeners a little bit of context of why we brought her here, we we just really wanted to talk about Workers' Memorial Day. And I remember Abby posting a lot on social media, mostly LinkedIn, regarding what should be done and what organizations should be doing. Um, and so we wanted to broaden our review at Safe Start on what that looks like. So here you are.

What Workers Memorial Day Means

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, workers Memorial Day is that's a tough one because it's we're talking about workers that died on the job. It's the most serious thing that a safety professional will deal with in their career. And some, you know, I never dealt with it in my jobs when I was working directly in the field with the workforce. And so I feel, you know, that luck of working in a tough industry and never having that same experience that other colleagues in safety had, where they were, you know, deposed on the stand or you know, calling the family. And I just I can't imagine those situations. And so I hope that Workers Memorial Day is something that's beyond, you know, what us that are in the trenches, you know, in safety or dealing directly with the workforce, how we understand it. But I hope that it gets out to the general public too. And really at this point, you know, if people think about it and their connections, that their life probably has been impacted by someone who lost their life at work in a workplace incident. So um there really is just like this broad impact already. But thinking back, um, you know, my direct work with the workforce was in the construction industry. And we're out there, you know, in front of the general public. And what do people think about when they see construction work going on? Oh gosh, like it's gonna, this is gonna take forever, they're in my way, they're loud, whatever. And it was always it was a struggle, you know, dealing with those jobs in the public, you know, right of way or just around public that they don't understand what we're doing, and often have this conception that it's negative. And, you know, we would think we're building this structure, we're building this new capacity, we're fixing this road. Like you should all be grateful and just be patient. Um, and so when I think about Worker Memorial Day, I think about you know, just the public interface with our workforces that we serve. And do they understand that impact? And are they, you know, having that respect for what our people are doing? I feel like that's always a layer of the work that I've done in safety.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Yeah, no, I appreciate that background. Now, full transparency, you would think that a podcast host would share questions with the guest and let them know what's going on. Well, that didn't happen. And as you probably can see, based on the chemistry here, that uh she Abby, you pretty much predicted what I was gonna ask. What is Memorker's Workers Memorial Day? But the the construction um appetite, the the discussion about construction, I I feel that 100% because I remember before working with construction, driving through temporary traffic control zones, you're you're already frustrated from driving in the first place, but then here you are going through a zone that might may or not put you behind the schedule that you've already predicted yourself to be on. And here you go getting mad at a person that you have no idea, you don't know their background, you don't know who they are, they're just flagging. And they're the they're the face of your frustration, and then yeah, I totally get that.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Um, yeah, and that flagger often that's like the lowest, you know, level person on the job site, you know, not a dig on anybody, but it's often the youngest person, the newest person. Um, you know, there are trainings out there for flaggers, but again, it's usually that most vulnerable kind of person that's in that flagging position. And they're you're you're right, they're like the face of the whole thing and feeling all that frustration from the motorists. And it's just when you really think about it and just think about life. And if you really do think about putting yourself in other people's shoes, just have like the tiniest bit of empathy, you would just be like, you know, construction season. What do we have here in Minnesota? We have winter and construction, um, and just it's life. And these people are doing their job, and you're probably going to or from your job, and you know, they deserve every bit of safety that you enjoy at your job too. And so I don't know. I as like people talk about AI and technology and all these things, it's like I still come back to the human part of it. And if we could have a little bit more humanity there, that that would go a long way in our workplaces.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

I a hundred percent agree. And then something that we've been focused on. I could unpack 13 things you just said right now, but um, some of the things that we think about is when you're driving a car and you're frustrated. Well, nobody control that, but you, you, you, you're the one that controls that, and we talk about that frequently in Safe Start. And because the majority of the stories that we hear are mostly driving stories, and then it's easy to blame another driver, and that's what we get into in assurance, and then they look for blame, and then blame is what usually comes up in the workplace because that's what we do at home, and that's what we do on the road, and you know, and I I know that I listen to you a lot, but I I I trust that you would probably say that getting a blame type of an environment is the worst way to go, and that's not memorializing anyone. Um, you could blame the traffic flagger, but ultimately it's the positivity of fixing your road, is what you just said earlier. And I that's if you ever thought about that, you might get something.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Think about that. It's funny. I um we there was a a pipe break right in front of my house, you know, two weeks ago. And I thought, oh my gosh, this crew is so lucky that it's in front of my house because I don't care. I understand that something happened and they have a job to do, and it was gonna be loud. I saw the equipment rolling down the street, I knew what was coming. I was explaining it to my daughter, my cat, anyone that would listen here at the house. And then the big lights went out because now it's nighttime and they're lighting up into our window, but I didn't care. And I was just thinking, like, oh, it's so good that this is in front of my house and not that grumpy guy down the street.

NSC Observances And A Personal Loss

SPEAKER_00 10:25

The destination is so much more important than the journey. And in this case, you got you got the positivity coming at the end of that. So that's great. All right. So um, if you could explain to our listeners, because a lot of them are gonna wonder what they should do for workers memorial day. But first, outline what do you think? What does the NSC do for Workers Memorial Day? And then maybe perhaps you can suggest what they, the listeners, should do for Workers Memorial Day.

Turning Remembrance Into Prevention

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Yeah, National Safety Council has brought into a lot of things for Worker Memorial Day. Um, I'm not sure of everything that's going on, but I know that there's been a week-long observation in the DC area um this week as we're recording, because the timing kind of turned out weird with um, I mean, the date is always April 28th, but I think they wanted a full week of um events. And so NSC is part of a lot of that. Our CEO, Lorraine Martin, you know, she delivers um remarks through, you know, just a few statements up to keynotes at events related to worker memorial day. So we're looked to as, you know, a voice of workplace safety and that we are a voice of worker safety. And so that's often where NSC is tapped to be involved there. Um, in the past, as a safety director, safety manager, risk control, um, you know, I would support client efforts with worker memorial day if they were doing something. I really can't think of large examples of the past of companies really doing something for worker memorial day. Um often it falls within uh work zone safety week. And so I know here in Minnesota, there's often a big event at the Capitol. And when I've worked for Associated General Contractors, we were heavily involved there. Um, you know, just a lot of it is amplifying, you know, amplifying that look at these empty chairs, or they sometimes set up like a traffic cone with a hard hat and a vest to like symbolize a worker whose life was lost on the job. And so it's a lot of it is just again, going back to that public and workforce interface is just getting it out to the public. Look what happens every year in the United States. This is the impact. And, you know, if you are married to someone that works in an industrial kind of capacity where it's a more dangerous, risky, hazardous job, um, you know, feel that and um, you know, say something about it, ask about it. I think that's what um worker memorial day efforts are about, is like a lot of things, it's awareness. But I think it with this one, it's more about that impact. And so with social media in the past, um, I would share about things that were happening. And then I don't know, I'd say a few years after like really getting involved on LinkedIn, um one of my past coworkers died on the job in a confined space incident. Um, I don't know all the details. I can imagine because I worked at this company and know the operations very closely, knew the person very closely. Um, and so since then, my posts about worker memorial day are centered on him as an example of, you know, someone that I worked with, never would have thought this could happen. You know, it's that's the the typical thing that people say is that, you know, this person would draw safety cartoons and I'd put them in the newsletter. He was a fantastic, like kind of street artist. And so it was always really cool art. You know, you could say Dion's doodling in safety class, but also it's really cool. Can I put this in the newsletter? And he would always agree. And um, I remember a funny one he did. It was a cartoon of one of our longtime superintendents and just kind of making fun of him because he can handle it, but you know, where people say kind of the same thing, broken record about safety, like uh bend the nails and do, you know, whatever it is, like they're the broken record, it's the thing they're always saying. And so he did a cartoon about him and it was pretty funny. So um, but yeah, just talking about how it's not like the person was a disaster on the job, and I was like, that guy's gonna die someday at work. It wasn't like that at all. Um, it was a person who, you know, has a family, kids, um, you know, a lot to live for, and you just don't know. Um you can't pinpoint, like based on, you know, the people on your job site that are the most risk tolerant. It's not that maybe those folks are the most at risk. It's really a factor of the conditions and um a lot of different things that go into the job day in and day out where things are going right. And then that one day when more things go wrong and the worst thing could happen. So um, so that's been my personal um, I guess, journey with worker memorial day is that first awareness so people know, and then it became personal. And so I think with safety professionals too, that they there's a lot of us that have that personal aspect of it, which is tough. Um, it would be nice to see the numbers go the other way.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Yeah, totally agree. And I think a lot of organizations in their preparation for something like this, they spend a week before to try to get prepared or maybe participate in preventative techniques. And I know that uh as I volunteer to do this podcast for Safe Start, I have a full-time job with JLL. And our activities this week are center around Global Safety Week. And what we're doing is sharing what we can do to prevent SIFs, serious injuries and fatalities so that way we don't have to worry about memorializing. But in this case, memorializing is what it's all about. And I will say the same about Barb Tate. Um, she's the CEO at SafeStar. And Barb has done a really good job at sharing what we can do to prevent serious injuries and fatalities by creating this thing that she calls a serious injury and fatality prevention quilt. Um, it's got many, many other names, but she puts faces on this quilt. And what she does is every time a face gets added, there's a mathematical equation that goes into it. And the equation really is centered around reach revenue and results of the organization. And it talks about how many people have been reached through training, through speaking, through all of these elements. And so Barb came up with the idea for this quilt, but most of it was based on pictures that were at an NSC Congress and Expo a few years back. And it made such an impact on her that she wanted to make an impact on the people that worked at Safe Start. And it wasn't really an outward-facing quilt, it was an inward-facing quilt. And she would ask all of us when I was there, she would ask everybody that's there currently, could you provide a story behind the face? And she would pull faces off of whatever resource and the story would be behind that person why they why they did what they did to save a life. And you can you can get into a really deep discussion about prevention of serious injuries and fatalities. Um, but I want you to think could organizations do a better job at recognizing or prevention so that way we wouldn't have to worry about memorializing people.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

Absolutely. Um, I felt in my jobs where I was workforce facing having workforce impact. I think impact really is the the key word. And how do you measure that? You know, impact. I don't know. Um like a person, they thought of something you said. Well, how do you measure that? That they remembered something that you said in a training, but it had impact where they did the thing that they were taught to do in the moment they had to do it, and that moment comes up, you know, three times a year. That's a huge impact. But how do we that gets missed?

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

And I was thinking too that like in my previous workforce facing jobs, that the only time I got traction with both the workforce and then we could get a community. A lot of my efforts were from the ground up in the beginning of my career, probably a function of you know, me being very young and coming from an academic background into construction, where like they don't want this young girl out of college, like telling them safety things.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

There was no bias, there was no bias on the construction worker there. Are you walking into there? Yes, of course.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

So a lot of the stuff I did was from the ground up. And so it was getting the respect of the workforce and then taking those concepts to the project managers and executives at the company. And so thinking about impact, it was what are the the trends? You know, what are we seeing out there? What and for us, you know, we didn't have that language back then of serious incidents and fatalities. We're looking at our recordables and um the items that are hitting our experience modification rating factor, which is impacting our insurance, which impacts our ability to get jobs. So these are the things that, you know, have the eyes and the attention. And so um, you know, one being we had hand injuries. It was this rash we called it, of hand injuries, where it was anything from like punctures to people were free cutting and held holding the object in one hand and cutting with a saw with the other hand or using their foot to balance something. And so major, there were some major laceration injuries. That is it a sift. I mean, some of them might be because they went down to the ligament, it impacted how that person's hand would function for the rest of their life. And so that would be part of the definition of a sift. And so we started to focus on those things and bringing it to the workers for listen, this is the trend. What do you think? Because as uh it's Sharon Lipinski, I think, that said this is the answers are in the room. And so instead of like me going and researching and searching and talking to vendors about, you know, hand protection or whatever, first bring it to the workers. What do you think? And it was like, okay, no more free cutting. Let's set up a sawhorse everywhere so that people can go straight there and they don't have to do something in the field and just do it in a split second, that there's a safe way to do the work. And so things like that, we brought it to the workforce. Then we eliminated, so then controversially, we got to zero in hand injuries within a year. And um then it became okay, what's the next thing? And so that's how I started to get traction with um really getting the attention on these serious incidents back then and using a worker approach to fix what was broken and then going to the executives and project managers to get their support. And so I think once they saw like the bigger picture of how the numbers were starting to shake out, people liked that. But really, it was removing a lot of recordables that moved the needle. And but if we really think about impact, I can still think, and it's related to the the fatality of the worker that I worked with, is that there were still a couple very serious um uh what's the right word? Um, just critical types. Work that we would do that so much about it was unknown until you got to the site sometimes. Um, it was literally our most dangerous work. But is that where we spent our time and dollars? It was not, unfortunately. And um, that was something that I, you know, it would be called that I squawked about a lot back then was can we get resources on this? And, you know, now having the language of SIF prevention, serious incident fatality prevention, that would have helped me as a safety professional to have this data behind it and be able to communicate to the executives who write the check to say, these are the most serious incidents that we could experience. And here's where we lack the critical controls. We know what the controls should be. Can you please buy them? Or can you please support, you know, whatever it is to do this? And so it just would have made things a lot more clear back then. So I'm glad that there's a lot of talk about SIF prevention. And even though people say, this is dumb because this has always been the case. We should always be talking about these things. However, when you're a lone safety professional or a small team, you often are just you're keeping your head above water. Like you are literally the duck with the legs going crazy under the surface. And you know, you're you've got your head above water and it's great, right? No, it is not. So I think having this language of sift prevention is it really is a game changer, even though some people will kind of poo-poo it and say this has always been here. I think how it's packaged now and the more full understanding is that's the story.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Yeah. There's um 13 things I want to unpack there. Um, but we just don't have the time. I I'm gonna really quick just summarize a few things. And first of all, shout out to Sharon Lapinski. She's right, learners are the ones that provide the best information. You could go back to Hop and say, hey, work is imagined versus work is learned or work is performed. You're not gonna get the real information unless you get those people involved that are actually doing the work, and that's important. Um, number two, for those safety professionals that are out there, if you're feeling isolated, um, this is a rapid fire question for you. So, how many people do you think you've reached in your lifetime in the career of safety?

SPEAKER_01 24:21

Uh, I guess the closest metric I could find, if we need to find a verifiable number, would be my LinkedIn follower account. But it's more than that because that doesn't count all the workers.

Beyond TRIR Toward SIF Metrics

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Or the people that you've spoken to, or the people that you've engaged with. And you never track that. So if you want to track a number for impact, there you go. You can start thinking about how many people you've reached. How many people were in your session? How many people were at the conference that came up to you? Do you have a little tick mark thing that you carry carrying your these are things that you probably consider, and that was one of the things that Barb said. You know what? Let's start keeping track of those people that we reach because maybe we've made an impact. We really don't know. But on the back end, you want to calculate that out. You could put a face on the quilt. That's important to note that you've made that much of an impact. The third thing is that Memorial Day, uh workers' memorial day. Um, if you wanted to practice things to prevent any time to memorialize a worker because nobody ever wants to do that, um, there's all kinds of activities and sif prevention um is one of those things. Now, again, I didn't give her, I didn't give you, I didn't give you a um the script, and I didn't give her the questions, but as you can see, Abby's dedication to this type of activity is shining through this in this uh interview, and I'm very grateful for that. You just did everything I wanted to do in your monologue right there without even asking the next two questions. So rapid fire. I mean, it could be. I I think we have to throw a Jedi reference in there. So I think you just did Star Wars and Star Trek. You just did a Jedi mind meld, so that was okay. I've never heard that before, but it's okay. We'll stick with it.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

I get the stars mixed up.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Um, rapid fire question for you, and this is gonna be kind of a shout-out to the safety justice league because you kind of finished all your podcast with rapid fire rounds, or you did kind of a spinny wheel thing. Um, but this this question would be um specifically for everybody that's out there doing total recordable incinerates. Should we start doing CIF metrics or total keep the total recordable incinerates?

SPEAKER_01 26:32

So oh, I have a lot to say about this, but I think we have to keep what's out there because you know, regulatory, we we have to report certain things. Um, I mean, in construction, when you're filling out the worksheet to get, you know, to do your bid, you have to put T R I R, Dart, EMR, you know, A, B, C, D, E F G. But I think you also have to make sure to tell your story. So, you know, whenever there's a rubric, I often go just a little outside that if the rubric didn't guide me towards what I really want to communicate about myself or in this case, my company. And so I've seen, especially with networks members, that um they are doing a lot more with their pre-qualification of their subcontractors or their uh contractors that come and work at their facilities. And so, yes, they gather the data, the typical data you would expect, but they're not going to beat someone over the head because they're 0.1 over the metric that they want. When they're over the metric, that's the beginning of a different conversation where it's like, okay, well, what are you doing about that? Since these are lagging indicators, perhaps things are different right now, and you're in like a flux moment where you're doing some things differently. So tell us about that. So I think that's really important for companies that are hiring those contractors, subcontractors, uh, vendors, that you have those mentoring kind of conversations where you're in the position to do that. So, yes, you keep tracking, you know, the standard typical lagging indicators, but maybe there's different ways you can start to report those leading indicators and different metrics. And so you can look at, we have networks members, um, General Mills and Tesla, look up their um corporate ESG reports or whatever they happen to call them, governance annual reports, search for um SIF. You can do like a control F search for CIF, and in both of their recent like five plus years corporate reports, you'll find that they are using the ASTME 2920 metric. Um, and they're also talking in those documents, and this is going to shareholders and corporate boards, they're talking about why they're reporting on those leading indicators versus phasing out some of the lagging indicators. And some companies are going as far as in those reports to not talk about the lagging indicators at all.

Where To Find Abby And Close

SPEAKER_00 28:58

That's huge. It's a big deal. I what we've done at JLL, just to kind of follow up on that point, was when a near miss is reported, we kind of call that the fulcrum. So one end of the seesaw would be leading, the other end of the seesaw would be lagging, and the fulcrum would be a near miss. And we've added a tick mark. Is there a potential for serious injury and fatality in this reporting? And then that would give us an opportunity to go back and look at that more seriously so we can control the situation a little bit more, um, adding a little bit more severity to the conversation. And so this makes a lot of sense. Now, I think I'd like to invite you back to have a discussion specifically about SIF prevention, ASTM, E2920, and how everybody's incorporating that into what they're already doing and the fabric is being adjusted. We can talk about Matthew Hallowell, we can talk about all the discussions that go into energy-based safety, even the work that you're doing at NSC. That is another discussion for another time. But to bring everybody back full circle, Workers Memorial Day is April 28th. I have to say thank you very much, Abby, for being here and discussing this with us. We I personally would love to have you back, and I know Safe Start would too. Um, but how could people get a hold of you?

SPEAKER_01 30:12

Oh, just search my name on LinkedIn, Abby Ferry, and you can add me there. And I try to post things that you can just repost. Um, so I try to scoop you on, you know, the interesting things that are out there in safety and technology, AI, and the human side. Um, but yeah, LinkedIn is probably where I'm most active on safety content.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

Perfect. Um, and she also has two books. There's the first book is the safety consultants toolkit, and the second is the safety habit. We'll provide a link in the description so that way you can hit it and find out what her books are all about. But first of all, Abby, thank you so much for being here. We definitely appreciate it. And that kind of concludes our time today. But uh any final words?

SPEAKER_01 30:54

Uh, you're very welcome, and I appreciate you.

SPEAKER_00 30:58

Hey, same here. That's a mutual feeling for sure. Um, uh with safe talk and with safe start, my I'm Tim Page Bower, but