S15Ep13 Consultant Spotlight - Rick Ricker: Why SafeStart Works When Safety Systems Stall

Danny sits down with one of our new safety consultants, Rick Ricker, to talk about why SafeStart clicked for him after decades in high-risk industries and behavior-based safety work. Dig into human factors, telltale signs, and the real-life moments where a small reset can prevent a big outcome.

Host: Danny Smith
Guest: Rick Ricker

Transcript

Welcome And Consultant Spotlight

Speaker 0:00

Hello and welcome once again to Safe Talk with Safe Start. I'm your host, Danny Smith. And today we have our consultant spotlight with one of our newer consultants, Rick Ricker. Rick is a certified safety professional. He's also a certified instructional trainer. He has a 30-year career spanning high-tech, high-risk, complex industries, including aerospace, pulp and paper, chemicals, logistics, coatings, and manufacturing. He has led EHS strategy and teams at the facility, division, and corporate levels, delivering measurables, including reductions in OSHA recordables, ISO standards, and VPP certifications. There, I only did that with two Ps that time. I usually put way too many P's in VPP. There I get it again. Anyway, uh safety management systems, uh audits. Uh he's implemented behavior-based safety, human factors, HOP, and serious injury and fatality reduction programs as well. And his philosophy centers on building systems that work because people are part of them, coaching leaders and frontline teams to become co-creators of safer, more reliable workplaces. Now you can read more about Rick's bio on our website, safestart.com. Just scroll to the bottom of the webpage, and you'll find our consultants listed there under the support heading, there on the bottom of the page. So uh Rick, all that to say, welcome. Glad to have you with us today.

Speaker 1 1:31

Thanks, Danny. It's uh it's great to be here. Listening to all that uh makes me think back about my career and wonder, wow, all those things.

Speaker 1:39

Yeah, and that's kind of what we want to start off with, talking about uh a bit about how uh how you got here, I guess.

Why Rick Chose SafeStart

Speaker 1:46

What brought you to SafeStart, first of all, as a process and as a company.

Speaker 1 1:51

Well, you know, for me, uh it started off a long, long time ago. When I when I had one of my first opportunities, um, I got involved in the the BBS side of things. I actually did some stuff with BST and and met Tom and we had him at one of our plants, and then we had Scott Geller at another plant. I love those processes, but I always felt it it kind of missed some of the people aspect of it. It was really good to go out there and watch people, and and there were benefits in that uh that vicarious learning part of it. But uh I just I felt we were doing a little bit too much on the blame. And when I had an opportunity and and started learning about SafeStart, I felt it filled a spot in the toolbox, uh, in my toolbox anyway, from a safety perspective, to help people improve skills that they could use, you know, at home, on the road, or at work. It wasn't just focused on the common things that were in the toolbox. You know, the when I look at the old view safety stuff, and a lot of that is is focused on blame. A lot of that is static. We do our JHAs in the morning and we forget about them, or our policies and procedures go into books and and we don't think about them anymore after that. Uh, it's reactive in many cases. We we have an incident and we get a lot of focus on it. But when when I looked at Safe Start, when I implemented it, it was pretty much the opposite of those things. It was proactive, things that we could do. It was it was not focused on blame, it was focused on learning for the individuals and what they could do to help themselves, whether again, at home, at work, or on the road. And uh that that's what drove me to SafeStart back in the day.

Speaker 3:31

That kind of leads to my next question as

What Makes The Process Different

Speaker 3:33

well. And that is, what do you find that's really unique about SafeStart? What is it that you just really love about the process?

Speaker 1 3:40

Yeah, I just I think to me, um, when I went through it, I've been in every one of those states. And I think the challenge that uh when I was learning it was to go back and think about all the incidents and close calls that I've had in my life and look at those and analyze them from a little bit different take. You know, oftentimes when we have something, we like to point the finger at others and programs and policies, but in the end, there's always that behavioral aspect. And I think in safety, there's there's been that fight. We don't want to blame the person that makes the last mistake when all the systems are there, but we also want to provide some tools for the individual at that time point in time when the the error could happen to give them an opportunity to not make that error. Or if they do, maybe the outcome is less than what it could have been before.

Rushing, Road Rage, And Resetting

Speaker 4:34

What uh what about with you personally? How has SafeStart impacted you personally? Is there uh one of the skills, one of the habits, perhaps, that's really helped you a lot? Uh something that's helped you, I guess, not just professionally, but more personally.

Speaker 1 4:50

Yeah, I for me, uh, and I talk about this in my training with the classes, rushing typically gives me the worst problem. And uh it taught me some skills, uh particularly living around Atlanta with the traffic that we have here. It's it's real easy to get behind and start rushing. And then, and then um, you know, as a fellow consultant brought up the term rustration, it starts to it starts to build that frustration level too. And I can see myself uh grabbing the steering wheel and squeezing, and my arms get real tense and my my knuckles get white. And when I'm in that that kind of frame of mind, then I'm much more likely to challenge you if you pass me or dive in front of somebody else and and take risks that I probably wouldn't take if uh if I if I do better. And recognizing that and being able to release that grip on the steering wheel a little bit and and relax lets me have that empathy for somebody else so that I can I can, hey, you know, I don't know what's going on in their life, and there could be something pretty significant, and I need to just chill out, let them do what they're doing, and not put myself at risk or others. And what's interesting about that is uh when I was going through Safe Start, I showed the boo-boo bandits to my kids and I shared some of the stuff with my wife. And I call I call Nancy. Um, she's kind of like Nancy 1.0 for me. So when I'm driving, she recognizes that. You know, you you look like you're rushing, you're showing, you're showing those signs of rushing. And oh, I see your your your knuckles are white on the steering wheel. You need to, you probably should release that a little bit. You're you're looking tense, relax. And uh that's helped me a lot. And then she's used those skills. So it's it's been pretty cool to see some of those things uh out there with with our relationship and and how the tools work for people that don't have the full training in it. You know, they've just been taught some of the basic stuff.

Speaker 6:45

Yeah, I love that. And it's it's funny. I have some of those same conversations with with my wife as well. Um usually it's one of those uh your eyes are not on task, I get the, nice, gentle, calm voice that reminds me, you know, just get my get my eyes back on the road, being I've been distracted for a split second

Catching Telltale Signs Early

Speaker 7:03

there, right? Uh yeah, you talked about the idea of you know recognizing or self-triggering the term we use, uh recognizing when that rushing and frustration is starting to peak with you, uh, and recognizing those telltale signs. And I that's one of the things I love that have been brought forward into Safe Start Now. Uh, I think that's a really, really helpful tool for us. And that that's helped me a lot personally, just recognizing not when the state is just like it, for lack of a better way to put it, just at full-blown status, uh at 10 out of 10. But hey, it it's gone from a four to a five, it's gone from a five to a six. Just recognise an incremental, recognizing those incremental changes is that's been really, really helpful for me.

Speaker 1 7:47

Yeah, I agree. And I, you know, in the training portion of it, when we're going through telltale signs, I think that that's one of the big takeaways for a lot of people is trying to recognize before or as they're getting into them, recognize them sooner. And and like I said, for me with rushing, I it's I can end up in it pretty quick. And I'm like a lot of people I know out there, if I've got if I've got 15 minutes of time, I think I can cram 20 or 30 minutes of stuff into it. And that invariably gets me behind. So it's taught me to analyze those things a little bit more before I accept doing something or just say I'm gonna go do it. And or maybe even tailor that down a little bit. Hey, I I can't get it all done, but maybe if I can work 10 minutes on it and I'll still be okay and I won't feel like I'm rushed moving forward. And uh that that's a big thing for me, and that's a a habit that's been uh beneficial.

Speaker 8:41

True. What's been some of the uh most exciting things that you've seen while you've been on site training Safe Start?

The Stories People Share After Class

Speaker 1 8:49

Uh, you know, I think it's the stories. For me, it's it's when you get done with the session and somebody comes up and shares that story about what happened to them. Uh that that's really cool. And in the way that I think about it anyway, that they're they're willing in in an hour and a half or two to come up and share some of the most significant life events that have happened to them, whether it might be, you know, a fatality of a close friend or a family member or something that happened that that seriously hurt somebody and how it relates to what they learned in the class and how they could take that away and it could have prevented that from happening to their significant loved one. Um, that's pretty cool. The other thing I like a lot is after you've gone through the trainings and you've particularly when you've worked with the client multiple times, and people just know who you are. And it's a weird feeling to walk through a plant and say, Hey Rick, hey Rick, hey Rick, and you're like, you don't know half of them because you have 25 or 30 people in a class over four or five days, and you meet certain ones of them that you remember, but not everybody, but they remember you. And that's uh that's a pretty cool feeling while you're walking around a plant uh to hey, hey, there's a Safe Start guy. Hey Rick, what are you doing? So that's that's pretty cool feeling.

Speaker 10:05

It really is. I I just love it when you see people that, and I think our our trainers and those who've implemented Safe Start understand what I'm saying here. When you just see people that just get it, you know, and they they recognize the not just the concepts, but they recognize you as being a part of that, and just that sincerity that and appreciation that folks have for that. I know not not everybody appreciates safety training, as Larry Wilson has often said, but uh it is nice when you see you know them appreciate you for what you've done for them, right?

Speaker 1 10:35

Yeah, oh I

Making Training Practical On The Floor

Speaker 1 10:36

agree. I and I think the the skills are very beneficial when you when you talk kind of some of the classic safety training, Hascom and Lockout Tag Out, it gets it gets pretty generic and it's it's the same material over and over and over. And it it again, it's policies and procedures and written things and what what the regulation says that you have to train people on. And sometimes that that training just doesn't hit home as well. It's it becomes a little bit more boring, the stuff that's involved with it is on much more on the technical side than it is on the practical side. And and oftentimes, I mean, I think even in my career, you know, as you're developing lockout tag out procedures or you know, other stuff in the facility, a lot of that gets done by the safety person. And and particularly, you know, early in my career, there wasn't a lot of input from the people on the floor. And so you're writing a procedure and then they're enacting it, but they don't necessarily do it that way. And we we didn't spend the time, I think, early on in in safety trying to get to some of those things. I I think we tried with what we could, but now we know you know there's many more beneficial things out there on the floor that we got to get to the people and uh and learn from them. And and same with Safe Start skills.

Speaker 11:52

So yeah, it just comes back, it's a bit of an engagement with them, but certainly it's it's a respect thing as well, right? If and I I always use the example of lockout tag out. I would go out when I was working on a lockout procedure and ask the people who are going to be using the lockout. Hey, if you were the one who were blocking this machine out, tell me how you would do it, you know. And you know, I knew the the of course they had the knowledge of the regulations and all t oo, because we trained them, but at the same time I had the technical background on that, and we could marry those things together and get something that would work on the floor, and I think that's a great way to do it. I just love how SafeStart kind of bridges that gap too, right? And that's uh that's a huge thing

The Coffee Burn That Sealed Buy In

Speaker 12:32

for us. So, well, let's wrap this up, Rick. And uh, if you would, uh anything else you'd like to say real quickly, and then if you would uh give everybody your your contact information if you'd like, just uh how they can email you and get in touch with you, and uh we'll start wrapping things up here.

Speaker 1 12:47

Sure. I I I'll share a quick story about when I I implemented uh Safe Start at Rail Service. We had brought Don in and he he came and gave the executive leadership team a little coaching session and everything. And then um a couple of days later, we were in the break room in the morning and I was talking to Tim Benjamin, our CEO, and I was making coffee at the coffee maker, and he was talking about hey, the Safe Start stuff sounds pretty cool, but what do you what do you think about it? And I was talking to him about the concepts and our our small team. So we did rail switching all through the country at locations where we had two people up to 150 people, and they worked in teams out in remote areas a lot. And I was talking to him about it, and as I was talking to him, I'm making the coffee, I poured the water in, and then I set the pot down right next to the coffee pot and not on it. And as soon as I added the water, it was one of those machines that started making coffee. And we're having a conversation, and I got my hand on the counter there, and he's watching, and all of a sudden the coffee starts coming out of the coffee maker and then onto the side of the counter and actually burns my hands. And he was like, You know what? That's that's pure SafeStart. And I was like, exactly right. I said took my mind off talking to you, complacent, you know, not thinking about what I was doing. And then I have an opportunity to get a burn to my hand. We have spilled coffee all over the place, and he says, We're gonna do it. So it was uh it was kind of the selling point uh for for us using Safe Start when I was at Railserv. So um pretty cool. So love the process.

Speaker 14:25

Yeah. So uh if you would tell folks how to get in touch with you, give share your email information and then we'll we'll wrap up.

Speaker 1 14:32

Sure. Yeah, if you want to get in touch with me, it's rick.r at safestart.com. And if you have any questions, definitely reach out. I'd love to talk to you.

Speaker 14:41

Excellent. Thanks so much for your time today, Rick. I really appreciate it. Again, that's rick.r at safestart.com. Uh, thank you for joining us today. Please share this with some of your co workers. And uh thank you for joining us today. Safe Talk with Safe Start. I'm Danny Smith. Have a great day.