120: Four Pillars of Employee Wellbeing

Jill James:

This is the Accidental Safety Pro, brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded September 4th, 2024. My name is Jill James, HSI's chief safety officer, and today my guest is Catherine West. Catherine is currently senior director of safety and health for a global company. She's a compassionate and inclusive leader who provides visible leadership to successfully implement transformational initiatives and programs to advance culture, development, and strategy, which is why I asked her to come here today. Catherine is active with the National Safety Council, serving on their Delegates Committee to the board of directors, and is a member of the women's division at NSC. She supports their DEI scholarship efforts, helping to obtain resources to provide scholarships for underrepresented students pursuing a degree in the EHS and safety related fields. Catherine joins us today from Tennessee. Welcome to the show, Catherine.

Catherine West:

Thank you, Jill. I really appreciate being asked. And it's a pleasure to be here.

Jill James:

Yeah, I'm so happy that we were able to meet one another. We met about a year ago at an OHS Leaders Summit. And you were on the stage, and I thought, oh my gosh, I've got to know this woman and learn more from her. And you were such an impactful speaker. I'm just so thrilled that we're able to do this today.

Catherine West:

Well, I appreciate that warm introduction and the compliments there, but you were the one absolutely nailing it as the moderator for that conference. And I too was equally as impressed and wanted to get to know you better, so it was a win-win.

Jill James:

Thank you. That was a big leap for me. I never had MC'ed a conference before that day, and so that was a big stretch. And I'm about to do it again starting this week.

Catherine West:

Well, you couldn't tell. You looked like a pro.

Jill James:

Oh, thank you, thank you. Catherine, what is your origin story? How did you find your way into this profession?

Catherine West:

Well, it's pretty interesting because the title is the Accidental Safety Pro, and that totally fits. You hear people say, "I aspired to be a safety professional," or, "I knew early on," or, "This was a career choice." Yeah, no, that's not me. I never once said, "Ooh, I want to go into and I'm going to aspire to be a safety professional." It is something I literally stumbled into by chance. But once I stumbled into it, I found that I actually loved it. And I've made a couple of attempts to get out of it, and I always seem to come right back into it. But I had recently separated from the service in the Army Medical Services Corps and was recruited to come to a small little manufacturing company here, which is in Tennessee, which is the town that I still live in now even though it's been a number of years. And I actually was hired to do sales, and was doing professional sales for them. We can have another little sidebar story, but I wound up getting pregnant with my first child, which is something multiple doctors told me that would never happen, so it was a miracle in and of itself. Once my daughter came along, I knew I couldn't stay in sales because it required extensive travel. I was on the road week, two weeks at a time. At the time, I was doing just domestic sales, but they were getting ready to promote me into international sales, so I was going to be gone two, three, maybe a month at a time. And I just could not do that with a small baby and some other challenges. She was premature on top of that. Nothing serious. And she's outgrown it, and she's doing absolutely amazing today, but she did have some health issues starting out, so with that, there was no way I could be traveling, no way I could be on the road. I'd actually started looking for something else, and it just so happened, actually while I was still on maternity leave, the company posted a position in human resources.

Jill James:

The same company.

Catherine West:

The same company. They wanted to do an internal hire. And the focus of this human resource position was going to be more on recruiting, employee relations. And, oh, by the way, they didn't have a safety person in the companies, and they're like, "Yeah, can you put together a safety program for us?" Interestingly.

Jill James:

Many people listening to this, there's people who know that one well.

Catherine West:

Yeah. And I'll admit to say I wasn't even sure what OSHA stood for. I was like, "What is this acronym? What is this?" Coming out of the service, I hadn't worked in industry. I heard stories of my dad and my brothers. They were all blue collar workers. My dad retired from the railroad after 35 years, so I'd heard him speak of different things regarding to safety and some experiences that he had, but I really had no personal reference for it. But sure enough, I said, "Sure, I'll give it a try." I'll take on any challenge once if it doesn't kill me, so to speak. So I did. I jumped right in and dove into getting all the training that I could on both human resources, learning about the whole human resource environment and that career, but also with the safety side. And I really found myself gravitating doing the training and the safety and going out there and working with people. The plant had a horrible, horrible safety record, so there were plenty of opportunities for improvement, so to speak. And I found that being the piece that I gravitated to out of all my other responsibilities or duties there at the plant. And quickly attended the OSHA Training Institute and got all my certifications that I could and all the training that I could. The company was well willing to send me all this training to get up to speed. And that's how I got started. And unfortunately, there was a downturn in the business after I'd been there a few years, and so I wound up getting called up in that. And the next job after that, went into safety and I've never looked back.

Jill James:

Wow. While you were doing that first job, did you keep doing the HR stuff too? Yeah, how did that work?

Catherine West:

I did. Of course, that was part of my responsibilities as well. And in a way, there was a big connection. And I learned so much through, that through the recruiting. And we had adopted a behavioral-based interview process. And I was put in charge of bringing that into the fold, getting the managers and everybody on board with training. And that was really my first introduction to anything behavioral-based. And so I quickly made the connection between how people behave. And even though the whole purpose of it wasn't looking at it from a safety standpoint, it was looking what competencies are we hiring for? It was pretty clear that there were certain competencies that when you brought people in, they were a little bit safer and some mindsets and just how people behaved. And there were some natural tendencies that people tended to gravitate to. There really was a connection there that I was quickly able to see. When you find these competencies in people, oh, by the way, they're not the people out there having accidents as much. They behave differently when they're on the floor.

Jill James:

Yeah, I want to talk more about what it is that you learned in this career based on those early observations, but I think we'll get to that. After you made that downturn and then you said you never looked back, what was that next job that you really jumped into safety?

Catherine West:

It was into safety. And I went to work for a contractor down at the Marshall Space Flight Center, working on a NASA contract, which was amazing to support the mission with NASA. But I knew when I started looking for another job and building my resume, I really focused on the safety. I knew my next job was going to be in safety. That's what I went looking for. I didn't go look for another HR job, I didn't go look for another trainer job, I went looking for another safety job and was fortunate enough to find one pretty quick. And so every job after that has been back in safety.

Jill James:

And it's been how many years now?

Catherine West:

Ooh. That was getting very close to 27 years ago.

Jill James:

Oh, wow. Congratulations. That's wonderful.

Catherine West:

Oh, thank you. And a lot has changed in the career field in 27 years.

Jill James:

Yeah. Yeah, some of those things that you mentioned that you started to notice with that connection with the way people behaved, what are some of those things that you've noticed that you're bringing forward into your work now? The missing critical pieces.

Catherine West:

People who are willing to take responsibility for themselves and others, people who are willing to train and help others. Again, there's that close connection. If you're willing to take somebody under their wing to help train them, they're going to train them and take that accountability for others and others safety and others, how they perform in a way. Those were some of the things which, again, those are competencies now that we look for. When you're building a culture within a company, you want those competencies in people. You look for people who are willing to intervene, who are willing to reach out and stop somebody if they're doing something unsafe, who treat everybody like their family and building that culture like your family.

Jill James:

Catherine, when you notice that those competencies don't exist in a person or a company or a department, can you teach that? And have you been successful in that? Or how do you go about making that change?

Catherine West:

And I can tell you some anecdotal stories because it was another pretty large project that I was on for a number of years. When I started at the project, the safety record was pretty bad. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't that great. They were probably running probably close to a four for total recordable rate. Again, lots of opportunities for improvement and really looking at the analysis, really digging into the data. What does the data tell you? And it very quickly emerged that whole 80-20 curve, where it was about 20% of the population causing 80% plus percent of the incidents. It holds true. It's just odd how so many of those things hold true. Probably not the politically correct statement, but we were seeing the repeat offenders or the frequent flyers. We call them our frequent flyers. It was the same people having incidents over and over again. Obviously you've got too much time invested in training. These are very knowledgeable people, very highly skilled people for what they do, so you can't just go, "Okay, we're going to get rid of them." How do you address that? We actually went out and assigned them mentors. And we picked senior leaders in the organization, like a director or above. And their role every week, every two weeks, they dictated the schedule. We let the directors say what frequency they could meet and just start having those one-on-one conversations and talking to them about their behaviors. What were they doing that were leading up to these events? And bringing that awareness to them. I can't claim 100% success, but the number of our repeat incidents dramatically dropped in that demographic. We did see a significant reduction. And it was just, again, making them aware that we don't want this behavior. This isn't the desired behavior. And making them aware what were the things that were impacting them that was causing them to behave the way that they did that was leading to their incidents.

Jill James:

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's really interesting. I bet you have more stories. I'm guessing maybe every once in a while people would come to you and say, "Hey, I didn't realize this about myself." Or those senior leaders that you assigned to people would come back with some interesting data for you as well and what they learned from people.

Catherine West:

It is. And that is another point to where I started down this journey, sorry, in realizing that it was the mental state and why I'm so adamant that the people's wellbeing depends on the safety is a lot of times it was people who were having personal struggles either financially, family situations that were going on; they were taking care of an elderly parent, had a special needs child. One in particular who had a number of incidents had a special needs child, and a pretty extreme case as well. He was working long hours and then going home and getting hardly any rest and dealing with a less than ideal situation at home. And so there were so many personal factors that were impacting these people that they were bringing into the work. And they were causing them to be injured more than the rest of the population.

Jill James:

Yeah, makes sense, makes sense. Well, the thing that you spoke about last year at the conference that you and I were both at was about wellbeing and how it's a critical piece of workplace health and safety. Do you want to talk about when... I was going to ask when you realized this was critical, but it sounds like you're telling that piece of the story right now. And I know that that when you started really working in earnest on employee wellbeing, there were specific areas that you focused on. I think you just mentioned two of them, family and financial. But I'm wondering if you can dig into what did you learn about wellbeing? And what are those areas that you decided to focus on so that others can learn from you as well, Catherine?

Catherine West:

Well, I'm very fortunate that the size of the company that I've been with, they have other departments, and they were very open to this. We've had our safety philosophy that started back... Goes all the way back to 2017 where we started building the culture and everything that we've got in place. And that building of safety culture has cascaded over into all aspects of the business, so working with the HR partners and putting together what we call our wellbeing strategy, which encompasses all four pillars of a person's life. How do you optimize your physical health knowing the impact that your physical wellbeing has on your mental wellbeing and just your ability to perform your job? And it's just so many demonstrated studies out there at that point to if you're physically more fit, everything else tends to fall in place a little bit better most of the time. And again, we established financial tools, brought in a vendor to provide financial planning. That was financial, and financial security is one of the pillars as well, understanding that people dealing with financial shocks and financial struggles, again, it's those things that's going on in your head that impacts what you bring into the workplace. The other piece of that is just having a balanced emotional state. There's a number of emotional resources that we have. We've got people who are out in the workplace that are trained and assigned to be available for people to come alongside to and just talk if you're having a bad day. And their role is just to sign point them to the resources. You can publicize EAP programs, you can put it out there, but so many times won't go look or they don't know how to go look or they're hesitant. They think the company is watching, so they don't want to go out there and look at who's having some emotional struggles. There's so much stigma around it. Doing everything you can to de-stigmatify those things and make it easy and available for people to connect anytime they need it. And then the fourth pillar is just the social connection. Particularly going through COVID, we saw so many cases. And not just in the company, across the globe, you heard so many stories about people just dealing with the isolation and the work from home situation and not feeling connected and having a chance to build those meaningful relationships. We almost got away from that term, and it was a term that was used pretty popular several years ago about the work husband and the work wives and the work family because you spend more time at work with those people than you do at home in some cases. That was absent.

Jill James:

Gosh, that's true.

Catherine West:

You didn't have that. And some people need that. Others don't. Not everybody needs it, but a lot of people really need that social connection. They need that relationship. Again, how does that impact people when they don't have those social connections going on? How can you purposely, as an organization or as an enterprise, ensure that you're building those meaningful relationships? And if you've got remote workers, how can you help them to build those relationships outside of an office situation, help them get involved in community, get involved in their churches, and help them with the tools and the resources to get them moving in those directions to build those social relationships?

Jill James:

Yeah. Catherine, do you mind if I repeat each of the four? And can we just dig into each of them just a little bit? If people are wondering, oh, I wonder... As I'm listening to you, I'm like, "Ooh, I want to ask a question about that piece," or, "Ooh, I want to ask a question about that piece." Is that okay?

Catherine West:

Sure.

Jill James:

Okay. You tell me if I got this correct. The four pillars that you identified are the person's physical health, their financial health, their emotional balance, or emotional wellbeing, and social connection. Did I get those right?

Catherine West:

You nailed it.

Jill James:

Okay. All right, the financial planning and security, as you spoke of it, many of us, people who are listening are like, "Okay, sure. My company offers a 401k. And we have these annual meetings, and I know I have access to the person who helps manage those things." I have a feeling you're talking more than that.

Catherine West:

Yes, it is. We actually have a vendor that provides financial planning services to help you. How can you maximize your 401k? And those company benefits with whatever outside financial planning that you may want to do, but it also offers training if you're in a financial bond. And part of our EAP resources also offer financial planning. And basically, if you are swimming and credit card debt, so to speak, what are some things that you can do to help yourself get beyond that? And some deliberate action plans to help you be more financially stable and more financially sound. That's why it goes beyond just the 401k.

Jill James:

Yeah. It's retirement and it sounds like it's also helping people manage that month to month, year to year budget piece of their life. Yeah, so important. I had the opportunity when I was at the ASSP Conference in Denver a few weeks ago, I listened to a speaker from the University of Colorado Boulder. They have a research group there, and they are specifically researching the high rates of death by suicide in the construction industry. And one of the things that they've found in their studies that causes stress and emotional wellbeing that is not healthy is the financial piece. That industry in particular, because of its seasonality and the unpredictability of wages, it really, they found, has an impact on... That's one of the causation areas. And so it sounds so critical that this is a pillar of wellbeing. Maybe people don't have these skills, right?

Catherine West:

Exactly. Some people don't. They don't teach Basic Bookkeeping 101 in schools in most cases anymore. Those basic financial tools, so many people are coming into the workplace that don't even have a foundation for those. How do you balance a checkbook?

Jill James:

Yeah. Or what does that mean? Or what are the ways that you could do it? Some people are into spreadsheets. I personally am very fiscally responsible, and all of my notes are in a three ring binder because I like it that way.

Catherine West:

It's finding a system that works for you.

Jill James:

That's right. That's right.

Catherine West:

There's no one size fits all.

Jill James:

Yeah. Yeah. And so when you started offering those interventions or opportunities for the employees, were people like, "Oh, this is awesome." Yeah, what was the reception like?

Catherine West:

I think like any new program, it was probably a little bit slow to take off, as so many things are. We really put the onus on our supervisors and our managers to go out there and be deliberately and purposely talking about it, making sure people know. Because you can send flyers home, you can send emails out, but so many people really don't pick up to the connection to what it can mean to them. The so what? For me kind of thing. Or maybe it helps somebody else, but yeah, it's really not going to help me. But another thing that we do, we call it our culture of caring moment. We take our safety moment, so to speak, which is pretty common. A lot of companies have their safety moments. We go a little bit beyond that and we expand that to be more than just safety. And talking about financial situations and talking about these programs are some of the more common things that we'll put out there and get our supervisors and our managers and people to talking about. We have found once you start having those personal conversations and make it a one-on-one conversation, then somebody is willing to speak up and go, "Oh yeah, I called and I thought it was great." And so getting that word of mouth cascaded out through the organization, how this is benefited, get those personal stories I found for anything financial across the board, getting those personal stories and those people who are willing to speak up good, bad, or ugly on how that has benefited them.

Jill James:

Yeah, it's demystifying some of the things that carry those stigmas and financial wellbeing, financial security, financial knowledge. Like mental health, so many other things carry an unfortunate stigma. And so that sounds wonderful to use your culture of caring moment to demystify that. The second one that you identified pillar was physical health. Tell us about how did you approach employees' physical health?

Catherine West:

We've got a number of programs that we offer and even have transitioned to online health programs and not just the typical go to a gym. That just really doesn't fit a lot of people anymore in the work situation, so there's online programs that you can log into and do your workout at home. You can do it on your phone if you're traveling, you can do it on your tablet. And also, again, back to the remote workers or even if you in the office, ensuring people have the time to go do it, making it okay if you want to go at lunch and go take a break and go work out, go do it. And getting the leaders to set that example, I know quite often our senior leadership when they have their town halls or other events, they talk about utilizing the physical fitness programs and they talk about the benefit. And they're open about, yes, I dedicate time on my calendar to go work out. And making that okay and making that accepted norm. I think so often, people feel like that pressure is like, "Okay, I can't leave the office. I can't leave early to go work out," or, "It's going to be viewed as I'm slacking if I take off to go work out," but making it the norm that it's okay to go take care of yourself.

Jill James:

Wonderful, wonderful. Yeah, I guess I want to ask if you saw any shifts with people's physical health? Or is that something that your department isn't monitoring?

Catherine West:

I don't. Unfortunately, I don't have that data. That is HR information.

Jill James:

Exactly. Okay. Yeah. That's what I thought.

Catherine West:

You got to hold that a little close to the vast, though.

Jill James:

They do, they do, they do, they do for sure, for sure.

Catherine West:

Totally understand that.

Jill James:

All right, emotional health, emotional balance, and yeah, you talked about resources and pointing people toward that. Yeah, what does that emotional health look like tactically?

Catherine West:

Tactically, it's the frontline supervisors looking everybody in the eye every morning and just asking the question, "Are you okay?" And knowing your people well enough to know that even if they say, "I'm okay," that they're not. Frontline supervisor, if you're doing hazardous work, but even if you're not doing hazardous work, making those connections with people to know when someone's a little bit off and being willing to go have a conversation and just say, "Hey, let's go get a Coke," or, "Let's go get a glass of tea or a cup of coffee or something," and get them out of a situation to where they're may be more willing to talk and point them to those resources. It looks tactically if maybe I am assigned to do a hazardous job, maybe I'm a crane operator getting ready to do a big lift today or for an example, but I'm not on my A game of today, it's being willing and understanding that it's okay to say, "I'm not okay to do this today." And that being okay. And management working around that and figuring out a way to accommodate that. Going back to whatever the schedule pressures may be, management taking on that schedule pressure to allowing people to feel like it's okay to say, "I'm not okay," if they're not on their A game that day.

Jill James:

Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking about the responsibilities of these managers and leaders. And that's a phenomenal culture of caring that you've created. What about the care and feeding of those, so to speak, of those leaders and managers? Who's looking out for them? How does that work upward? Yeah.

Catherine West:

That could be the biggest challenge because it's hard time. Sometimes the hardest thing is getting the managers to practice what they preach, so to speak, and to recognize when they are burnout. But again, it starts with the senior leadership and having programs and policies. And one of the things that they do, particularly through the holidays, during Christmas, they'll say, "Hey, we're taking off for two weeks. Don't send us emails through the holidays." And setting that expectation that everybody does the same and go take care of themselves and getting that message out there loud and clear.

Jill James:

Wonderful. Wonderful. Yeah, I've worked for leaders like that too. It's a really refreshing thing. The social connection piece, that's of interest as well. I think as I was listening to you talk about that, and I want to dig more into that, I was thinking about loneliness. The United States Surgeon General just this year has said that loneliness is an epidemic for people in the United States.

Catherine West:

Yeah. And that's sad.

Jill James:

Yes, yes. Yeah, and that social connection. Would you talk more about what opportunities are you creating for people? Or any thoughts on that piece.

Catherine West:

That's been pretty varied, and in locations where we have predominantly work from home situations. Some places are trying to get people back into the office, so once a week they'll have a pizza party to encourage people to come back into the office or even if they want to just come in for the day and just want to come in for the lunch and get people to start building those connections and ensure they feel connection. And again, there's resources out there on how to connect with social activities outside of work. We've also got a pretty robust, what we call our employee networks and our employee affinity groups. And quite often, these groups do go beyond the boundaries of work. And if they're all in a local area, even if they're remote workers, they'll all meet up somewhere and go out to dinner or go out and have drink or something at a certain time of day or have a frequency in which they'll do that. Again, and that's encouraged to do that. And again, rebuilding those social connections out there.

Jill James:

Yeah, talk about the affinity groups in case anyone heard that and went, "Ooh, what is she talking about?"

Catherine West:

Well, they're actually getting more and more common. And I think it is a great thing where they get people who are affinity groups. For an example, VETNet, it's the Veterans Network. We have a lot of veterans. A lot of veteran spouses are included in that because veteran spouses have their own unique challenges that they face, so building those networks to where veteran spouses can lean on each other. Veterans. We've got one for people of Hispanic, people of color, a women's network, one with disabilities. People have some type of limitations, regardless. It could be visual, could be physical, could be hearing; to include people who have some neurodivergence is a part of that. We have actually a pretty well-represented population of neurodivergence, and so building a network where they could get together and talk about their unique challenges, and then taking those challenges and making it visible to leadership and just raising the awareness these are the challenges and these are the accommodations that we need. Interesting, I have, through the course of doing safety work, worked with this group quite a bit on helping out with accommodations, and everything from a computer screen. What do you need if you have some visual limitations for a computer screen? And what are the best ones? And they always have the best answers.

Jill James:

Of course, of course.

Catherine West:

Going to them and helping out with those challenges. They've been great to work with. And so it's a phenomenal program that's everybody gets excited about. And certainly, I'd like to see it even expand. We even talked about some ideas of how to expand it even broader.

Jill James:

What a great... I don't know if you want to call it a side effect, a benefit of the affinity groups also, of course, being a social connection, of course. That makes so much sense. That makes so much sense. Yeah. Yeah, the importance of making those connections at work. But it sounds like you're also giving people ideas and opportunities to make connections in their communities for people that maybe that's more important to them than making connections at work. It's like, Hey, I'm at work enough; I want to connect in a different way.

Catherine West:

Yeah, and we also offer, it's a philanthropy platform where you can make donations through your payroll. You can do it through your payroll if you'd like, or you can do it otherwise, that'll go to your charity of choice. And quite often, they will run matching funds. Say if your favorite organization is... I'll just go back to the veterans organization and you want to donate $100, the company will give $100 match to that organization. They also pay for a certain number of volunteering hours. If you want to go volunteer at a STEM event or you want to go to a local high school and lead something to do with STEM, then they actually give you a number of hours to go out and do those things.

Jill James:

Yeah, HSI does that as well. Yeah, it's lovely. And then we have conversations about, "What is your volunteer work?" Beautiful. Gosh, I think this pillars of wellbeing, Catherine, that you're talking about can be a beautiful aspect of our EHS careers. And people listening might be thinking, oh my gosh, that sounds like a lofty goal. I'm over here in the trenches just putting out EHS fires left. How can I ever even get to that piece? Do you have any advice for people how to maybe get started or who might collaborators be?

Catherine West:

There's a ton of wonderful resources out there around digging into the mental aspect or doing investigations and getting to that root cause. And when you think you've got the root cause and you say it's situational awareness, I don't accept loss of situational awareness as a root cause. There's always going that next level beyond that. That's when you start having those conversations. That's when you start, "Well, what were you doing last..." In a very caring... Not stool pigeon manner, but in a caring way, just start asking what's going on with their life?What is impacting their mental state? Because so often, it is that mental state, again, what's going on? The six inches between your ears that drive your behaviors, and it's your behaviors that cause you to take different actions, and it's those actions that cause events. Digging that next level down, if someone just says situational awareness was a factor, don't accept that; go beyond that.

Jill James:

Yeah, absolutely. It's this whole thing of keeping your mind on your job, but what took your mind off of your job?

Catherine West:

Exactly. Exactly. Another one of my favorite is, "Well, they were using a cell phone." Why were they using a cell phone? If they were in an area they weren't supposed to be using it to cause that distraction. What was going on that was so critical to them that they felt they had to take their eye off the ball to look at their cell phone? Yeah. Maybe they're waiting on that call from the doctor, maybe they're waiting on that text from a teenager that didn't come home last night. Again, there's so many factors, and it's so complicated.

Jill James:

It is.

Catherine West:

It's not black and white. Why did they think it was acceptable? Why is it the organizational norm to be accepted that it's okay to look on your cell phone if you're in a location you're not supposed to? Again, it's just taking it that next layer down, that next level or next layer of the onion.

Jill James:

Yeah, and so you're saying for people to maybe open the door into a conversation like this and to address some of these pillars is to maybe look at what's happening right now and specifically look at those instances where people are saying, "Oh, it was," as you say, "situational awareness," or some other trite thing that doesn't dig very far. Dig into it.

Catherine West:

Dig into it.

Jill James:

And see what you uncover, and use that information.

Catherine West:

Exactly. That would be the place to start. And then as you mature that, you can start branching out and a little bit deeper. But those would be certainly the starting places and the easy ones to tackle. Well, not easy ones, but that could have the biggest impact. And you might be surprised at what you find is really going on in your organization that's driving the root cause of your incidents.

Jill James:

Yeah. Yeah, Catherine, you mentioned having partners in HR to be helpful and work alongside one another. What might that kind of conversation look like? Or what other partners could people be thinking about if they're like, "I don't know, maybe there's somebody else I'd like to start with"?

Catherine West:

HR and safety work so closely because you're really dealing with the wellbeing of your employee base, so having that partnership and gaining that trust is so critical because so often sometimes HR professionals don't want to include safety. They don't have that level of trust or thinking you're crossing lines between what you have a right to know. But just building that rapport, even if you have to go have that additional level of training on privacy act information, need to know and building that partnership is certainly where I would encourage everybody to make sure that they have that relationship because there's so much overlap between the safety programs and the HR programs that having that partnership is just so critical.

Jill James:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what about, do you ever work with operations? Or would that be another door to open in the beginning?

Catherine West:

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I just take that as a norm and having that partnership and making sure that they understand too and making sure that they understand the criticality of them bearing the schedule pressure and not putting it on the employees and being cognizant of the impact the schedule pressure, And making sure that they understand that and having those conversation. And it's also so critical for operations personnel to be engaged with their people and know their people. Our safety professional to employee ratio is extremely low, I would say, across the board. Just anecdotally from what I've seen, it's probably a lower ratio than most comparable inched... or most comparable organizations. And it is because we do put so much on our leadership, and we put so much of the accountability on our managers and those expectations for them to be out there and be engaged to where the safety profession on them. We're the consultants. We're there to help. We're there to enable them to go do the things that they need to do.

Jill James:

That's a perfect way to say it. And so true, and so true. Catherine, 26 years in, what fills your bucket in terms of the career or keeps you going or just as a human?

Catherine West:

Wow. That could be the toughest question yet. It's the little wins. I like helping people. I like knowing that what I do makes a difference. And safety profession can be such a thankless job. It's so hard to ever go back to prove what you did calls something to happen. Did the incident not happen, or would it not? You can't predict that. You can't ever say the accident that you stopped. You can't prove a negative, so to speak. It can be so thankless. When you have those stories that keep people come back and they say, "You know what? I was getting ready to do something at home, and I remembered your discussion about a safety moment or an event, and I thought about what you said at home, and I did something different," or it's those stories about they talked to their kids and they got their kids to take a different choice because of the things that they learned from work and the safety program and how we emphasize taking it home, taking the tools home, teaching safe plan of actions to your kids and to your families. And you hear those stories when it happened, and people do those things. And it's still little wins. It's being able to influence the direction. Working with HR and putting these programs and knowing that the company is listening when you're out there talking about, "You need these things to build an effective culture," and them acting on it, knowing that what you've done is making a difference.

Jill James:

Yeah. That's the same for me. I like to hear those little wins. And sometimes they come from your family, sometimes they come from your friends, sometimes they come from your colleagues. It's conference season again, so we run into people who tell us stories as well. And that's good. How about growing your profession? How do you grow yourself? Do you have your own personal board of directors or is it the attending the conferences, your collaborators? Just on a peer-to-peer level, Catherine, what does that look like for you?

Catherine West:

All of the above. Just like when we met, when you run into someone out there that you think is very like-minded, making those connections. Being a part of the National Safety Council is tremendous. I'm not necessarily giving them a plug.

Jill James:

That's fine.

Catherine West:

Well, I mean I have no financial gain for giving the NSC a plug, it's just strictly how I feel about them. They do such amazing work and making those connections out there. But never stop learning. Who's out there in the industry that you think is really leading the charge? And I will give Todd Conklin a plug. I really think a lot of his work and what he's doing... And I like his concepts and listening to that. But also, I'm working on my master's, so you never stop learning.

Jill James:

Wow. Okay. I didn't know that about you. Wonderful.

Catherine West:

Yeah. Never stop learning, and look beyond... Well, I am working on a master's in that program, but look beyond just the safety. What are the things going on out there that you can learn that may not necessarily be considered technical safety, but it would influence how you would do your job? What is the leading edge psychology? What is the leading edge sociology? What's going on in the environment? Those are all impacts to how safety is going to be done in the future. Perfect example is look at the impact that the climate change... And I'm not trying to make a political statement. Everybody's got their opinion on what's causing climate change. There's just too much data that you can't deny that it's not happening. What impact will that have on safety? What impact is that having on people's mental wellbeing? What impact does that have with where people are moving? And staying up on what's going on with things that's happening broader than just safety.

Jill James:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely true, absolutely true. Yeah, just that piece alone that you just said, we're in the waiting period for the heat standard for OSHA to pass that. And that's a piece of things are hotter.

Catherine West:

It is. It's hotter. We're having to implement heat protection measures in places geographically that has never had to worry about that before.

Jill James:

Right, right. Absolutely, absolutely. Catherine, this has been just wonderful. Thank you so much for your generous time and sharing the four pillars of wellbeing with the listening audience today.

Catherine West:

Well, no problem. And again, I appreciate being asked. And I hope there's something out there that somebody can take away from it.

Jill James:

And thank you all for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good. May your employees and those we influence know that our profession cares deeply about human wellbeing, which is of course the core of our practice. If you aren't subscribed and want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app or any other podcast player you'd like. Or if you prefer, you can read the transcript and listen at hsi.com. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes. It really helps us connect the show with more and more safety and health professionals like Catherine and I. Special thanks to Emily Gould, our podcast producer. And until next time, thanks for listening.