125: OSHA Isn't Driving the Safety Pro's Future

Jill James:

This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by HSI. This episode is recorded December 20th, 2024. My name is Jill James, HSI's chief safety officer, and our guest today is Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl. Dr. Fran is Vice President of Safety at LCRA in the utility industry. She's also the founder and co-host of the SHE Unfiltered podcast, and author of Franny the Safety Nanny book. Dr. Fran joins us today from Austin, Texas. Welcome to the show.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Thanks for having me. I'm excited about this conversation. Thanks so much, Jill.

Jill James:

You're welcome. Thank you for being here. So, Dr. Fran, what is your origin story? How did this whole thing happen for you? How did you get into this biz?

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

I entered safety a pretty traditional way. I got the degree in safety back in the mid-90s. I graduated in 1995. And so, safety was still a pretty new endeavor, because when we think about OSHA, OSHA was born in the mid-70s. By the time the degree program started to catch up, it was probably about in the '80s. And so, although I wasn't one of the pioneers, I actually talked to a pioneer who entered the first degree program, I was probably in maybe the third or fourth cohort of students who achieved the occupational safety and health degree. But, as you know, Jill, when we did this, safety looked a lot different. It had transitioned from the engineering to engineering technologies degrees, and that was the degree that I achieved. So, yeah.

Jill James:

And where did you go to school?

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

So I went to school at Murray State University, Murray State, the Racers. We are still one of the original ABET schools, so I'm really proud of the foundation that they gave us there.

Jill James:

Wow. Wow. That's awesome. That's awesome. And yeah, you're right, we both graduated right around the same time. I was just a little bit ahead of you, but not by much. Yeah. So you've been at this a long time. So, when you decided to earn that degree, what made you choose it, and what did you think it was going to be?

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

So, I am not going to lie to your listeners. I didn't endeavor in college saying, "Oh, I want to be a safety pro." I went into college thinking that I would be an architect. So, yeah, a lot of the construction programs were in the engineering and technology school. And so, I had to take courses in the building, and it's a really neat building at Murray State, it reminds you of the Epcot ball on the top, that was our roof.

Jill James:

Wow.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

And, yeah, all of the STEM graduates from an engineering basis were in that building. They took courses in that building. And unbelievably, I will always say that safety chose me, because I took a course, and actually my course in construction safety was taught by a Dr. Linda Bach. I don't even know if she's still teaching, but I give her credit, her and Dr. Nancy St. Hilaire, because Nancy St. Hilaire was a visiting instructor, I give both of them credit for my endeavors in safety, because the programs were really still pretty male-orientated.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

I mean, we went to school in a different time, is what I tell people. Yeah, they were still really male orientated. I took a course, we had to argue a story about a chipper, and I hope one day Dr. Bach listens to my podcast or hears the story, because she'll affirm it, and I argued it, and she pulled me after class and she was like, "You should be in safety." And I'm thinking in my mind, "Yeah, no. That's not what I came to school for." Because my dad actually was a general contractor. And so, my thought was, I was going into the family business and I wanted to do architecture. I love buildings. I love natural things. I still am that way today. If you see my house, I'm very natural and neutral. And so, to me, because I was so fixated on how things were made and just being able to put a little art with that, that's where I thought I would go. But I gave her a little bit of opposition like, "Yeah, I don't think I want to do this." She's like, "You know what? You have another class regardless." She was like, "Take the course. Keep an open mind." And I ended up taking intro to occupational safety and health with Dr. Nancy St. Hilaire. And, Nancy was just wonderful. I mean, she was just very easy to talk to, very easy going. And that stood out to me, because a lot of the guys, when we were in classes, they would be very firm and, "You got to do this." But Nancy had a really soft approach. Dr. Bach, I think was an engineer. So her approach was a little similar to the guys, but Nancy had a lot of soft touch. And so, yeah, at that time, because I'm a really soft-hearted person, people don't know that part about me because I think safety toughened me up a lot, working in male-orientated spaces and having to overcome objections with the guys and being around craft. Because I started my career in construction, it does toughen you up. But, I like that she still had that soft touch.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

And so, I was like, "Maybe there is a way to coexist." So I took her course. I had A's in both the courses. And then, I took my final course and I just changed my major. And that is really the story. It was nothing, no fireworks, no sparks. I will say it just chose me, because had I not seen two women, all of my courses were taught by men. And most of my courses were full of men. So, I probably would've never even had a vision that I could even survive. So, if you could see it, you could be it. So, that was really what happened.

Jill James:

You just made me think about my graduate program in safety. And, I didn't realize until you started saying this that all of my instructors were male.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Wow. Wow.

Jill James:

Yeah, there wasn't a single woman. And, in my whole program, I think there were maybe five or four women. And I graduated in '94. You were '95 or '96, you just said, I think.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

I was in '95, so I was a year later. Yes.

Jill James:

I mean, how fantastic that you were able to have female mentorship and leadership. And as you were talking, I'm rolling through my head, "Okay. I took this one from... Okay, professor, professor, professor. Yep, they were all men. Yep."

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Yeah.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

And that's so interesting too, because I all am a big proponent of women and safety. I think we're really well suited for it.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

And so, when I am mentoring, I'm very clear with the associations that I only want to mentor women. And I know we shouldn't be that way. And I've had male mentees that were under me, but my soft sweet spot is always with women, and especially women who sometimes lack the confidence that they actually could do well. And so, yeah.

Jill James:

Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's an interesting story. Thank you for sharing that. So when you finished up and graduated, what was your first stop?

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

So my first stop was I went into claims, because I graduated in '95.

Jill James:

Yep.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

The economy was falling off the cliff. And somewhat, those were the jobs that actually came for me the quickest. I turned down a job with Tennessee Aluminum. And it was really because I didn't want to be in Tennessee at that time. And then, all the jobs that started to call me at that time were in risk or in risk and safety.

Jill James:

Yep.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

And so, I interviewed, I started off in claims. I did that for right about two years. But after one year in, I was like, "Yeah, I don't want to hear sad stories all day about..." I mean, because it could make you become really callous. And I think, a superpower of most safety folks is that we have a lot of compassion and we're very empathetic. So to hear people say, "Oh yeah, your vehicle ran into me." Some of it you know was not true, but we had to process the claims nonetheless, open up inquiries, and some of the stuff I would come home and be like, "I just can't do this forever. I don't know." God bless people who are processing claims, who work on the risk side of claims, who do the investigation, open the inquiries, who eventually become adjusters.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

That really wasn't where I wanted to be. I wanted to be boots on the ground. So my second stop was at Orange County Utilities in 1997. Yeah.

Jill James:

Wow. You got into utilities right away.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Mm-hmm.Right away. But, it was so similar because I worked... I was fortunate because I actually got to work with the craft who did work, but I also got to work on the capital improvement project. So I was back centered in construction a little bit, because just like everybody else, the counties, the cities, they have 30 year use plans. They have 10 year development plans. And, we at the county had to build the infrastructure, whether that was putting in water main systems, wastewater systems, all of that was planned between 10 and 30 years out. And so, I got to travel with construction crews. And so, I felt like I was back to where I started from in my roots, because I did my internship in construction.

Jill James:

Yeah. And did the fact that you came up in a household, you said your dad was a contractor.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Mm-hmm.

Jill James:

The stories and things that he shared with you growing up, did that inform how you approached your job?

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Yeah, go ahead.

Jill James:

Well, I'm just thinking as a young person, a female going into construction, that's a whole mess of water to navigate.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

So I told you, when I went to school, I talked to my dad. My dad, he recently passed, but he was such a big personality.

Jill James:

Yep.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

And so, he never met a stranger. So I get a lot of my people skills and my empathy from him, he was always willing to help. But, when I went to him and it was time to go to college, he was like, "I always knew you were going to college." My dad only had an associate's, but he was very supportive of my sister, who's also in safety, ended up turning into safety as well. He was always very supportive of us continuing education. But the only thing my dad told me to me was a standout story, I was 16, I was talking to him about college, I was PSA team, prepping for college to take the entry exams. And he never said you had to fall in the family business. He looked at me one day, he's like, "What you think about doing?" Because they used to think I wanted to be an attorney because I would litigate back and forth with the why? Why? Why? Yeah.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

And, I said, "I don't know. I used to want to be an attorney. I think I want to be an architect. I like houses and buildings." And he knew that. And he looked me straight in the face and he said, "You know? You could be whatever you want to be." And that always sat with me because he repeated it. He said, "You can be whatever you want to be." No one had ever told me that. And so, from that, I didn't take, "Oh, you need to be hugely aspirational." What I took from that was, "You get a choice and I'm just going to be proud of you for taking your journey." When he said, "You can be whatever," basically what he was saying is, "You get to choose that. And, I'm fully supportive of what you choose." Versus, "The expectation is you need to come and do this." Now, as I've gotten older, before he left here and became an ancestor, he wanted me to have a side business. He's always like, "You are so business minded." He's like, "You should just have a side business." And that was his dying... Not that I'm aspiring to that. I've considered consultancy, but I like the nuts and bolts of working with the company. I don't know what the future will hold, but that was his dying wish for me. He's like, "You're so talented. This is something you should consider." But he never swayed any of us either way.

Jill James:

What a gift. I mean, and as you call him an ancestor, what an ancestor to have. And, oh, wouldn't it be great if we all had those whispers in our ears?

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Yeah. I mean, I say that I wanted my kids to be... No, I wasn't as gracious to them. I told my daughter, "This is your major." And then, she changed her major her first year. And she's like, "I changed it and I'm officially an accounting major." Which is following her dad. And I was like, "No, change it back." And now, she tells me, "I probably should have been an engineer. I should have stayed." But, I wanted to drive my kids to certain things, because of what I thought I knew. But, tell God your plans is always what I say. But, I wasn't as kind as my dad. I put expectations on my kids. But, they've graduated now. They've chosen their path, and I'm fully supportive of where they're going.

Jill James:

Yeah. So you stayed in the utility industry for how long or what was your next stop, friend?

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

So, I bounced in and out of utilities. My next stop after Orange County was the City of Casaberry, same setup, same .gov. And so, for the first six, seven years of my career, I felt like being in a .gov space was actually a blessing because we were never going to be cited by OSHA. And, in government, you're going to learn bureaucracy, whether you want an order or not, how things work, how slow they work. But you're also going to get really familiar with the code of federal register the laws, because everything in government is by code, by law. So, I feel like that was a blessing for me, because I just didn't learn the law. I learned the intentions behind the laws and the whys of the laws. And sometimes, I think that may be a missing piece, because when you talk to new safety pros and you're like, "Why do you think they put that law into place?" They can quickly associate the deaths and say, "Okay, people must have died." But then, you have to tell them the backstory of how we actually got there. And, that to me, sits better with them when they understand the why we have the reg in the first place. It wasn't just some flippant regulator writing something and that they're all signed in blood. So, I feel like government was really a safe space. And I even would encourage that for insecure or new safety pros that lack confidence being in an environment that's a .org or a .gov, where they are not subject to shareholders, they are not subject to a lot of the pressures to perform that come with profit-driven companies.

Jill James:

I agree with that. I started in the government as well with OSHA for the first dozen years of my career. And, I think it allowed me to figure out my North Star, if that makes sense, because of what you just said. There weren't any pressures from the other organizations, the for-profit organizations. So by the time I started working for for-profit, I already knew who I was. And I knew what my line in the sand would be professionally. But I wouldn't have known that as a 23-year-old.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Yeah. And I think that that is the challenge, plus government taught you a lot of things. I mean, we take away the art of teaching. It taught you protocol, it taught you Robert's rules of order, whether you wanted them or not. It taught you how to be diplomatic, how to approach things not just with diplomacy, but with tact. Not being able to be so impulsive. General industry sometimes it flies by the seat of its pants and people become very impulsive and they take some risk. Versus, in government, it's a very calibrated way of being, nothing is really rushed. Now, the curse of it all is that it moves slow like an elephant, or a big ship moving towards dock, everything is slow, calibrated, everything is methodical. It's not just, "Oh, we're going to do this today. And oh, tomorrow, no, we're going to change course." It wasn't that way. If you budget it for it, you did it. If you didn't spend the money, they took it back. You had to get it reallocated. So, it taught you just a lot of protocol things that I think sometimes as we move into the nature of how business zips by today, professionals can get into the mindset of constantly changing course, not allowing things to work towards maturation, changing the safety strategy every year or every quarter. And it's like, you didn't give a lot of things time to mature. So, those are some of the things when I'm talking to newer professionals, we try some things. We take some small risks, but we understand the cost of the risk, and then we start to move pieces one at a time. We don't change 16 variables at the same time, because then we'll never know what works. So, I didn't despise government. I thought it was perfect. I had internal mentors, people that I could go to who knew the ropes, who would say, "Hey, I've been here 20 years. They're never going to let you do that, but here's a way you can do it." And, yeah, it taught you to build relationships. It taught you how to curve things too, to say, "You know what? There's a way to go around it and to still get to the desired outcome." Versus, sometimes, you know what you're seeing in the private sector and in the .com world is people shove things through and then you lose everybody along the way. So, I thought it was a blessing, as much as sometimes I wanted to get out of there, because your pay was low. It was a set amount every year. There were no big financial incentives. And if you wanted to do more, it's just, you got to wait to the next fiscal year to do more. And, yeah, so that was the challenge there.

Jill James:

I agree with you. I don't regret any of my time with the government for all the reasons that you said, and had really great mentors along the way. And, oh, gosh, so often, I don't know if you've heard this in your career, but I sure have like, "Oh, I can't keep up with all of this regulation stuff. The government changes everything all the time." I'm like, "Oh, no. No, they do not. No."

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Oh, yeah. No, no, no. Everything is slow. Everything.

Jill James:

Yeah. Yeah, that's not true. That's an urban myth. Anyway.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Yes.

Jill James:

So what was the jump when you went into private sector? When did that happen and what was that experience like for you?

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

So, I went into private sector in 2003. And I went into private sector into Sysco Foods. And so, it was straight into motor carrier. It was no breaks. It was a for-profit company, pennies on the dollar, that was their slogan. They had the, hey girl, base safety, from the standpoint of, "We do observations. We have our PWMs, preferred work methods. We do our OVSs, our observations. We have goals, the numbers that we have to do. We have to spend so much time out on the floor in the warehouse." And so, I went directly into that, and then you had to do ride-alongs. And so, I went directly into a transportation company, and actually, I started to like that. But I started to make some really early deductions about transportation early on that although they were not in the cross-hairs of OSHA, transportation was killing a lot of people. A lot of that settled with insurance carriers, and it never made it in front of a regulator, unless it became a Department of Transportation violation. Which, as you know, back in the day, a lot of their compliance now has been perfected. But, they had their list, but, I don't even like to use the word aggressive, it wasn't as calibrated, where you have your ISS scores, now you have your clearing houses, you have a lot of the technology that they put behind the Department of Transportation to improve just overall road safety to include the carriers.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

But, I learned about that, and it was a fast-paced environment. I really did like transportation. And so much so that when I did my dissertation, that's what I did it in. But, the reason why I liked it, they probably didn't understand, because I felt like it was raw, un-farmed terrain. And even till today, you can still make a lot of headways in transportation because it's not mainline. I just had this conversation with someone about... An attorney was calling me about depositioning and he had it all wrong about, "Safety people should do this." I'm like, "No, sir. Those are compliance people." And, I said, "How do I know this? Because, I teach at two universities and we teach... Yes, I'm in courses. We teach in transportation safety." And he was like, "You got to teach one." I said, "Zero. Zero." You leave the university as a safety pro with zero experience in Department of Transportation, fed motor carrier. Which is interesting, because up until this past year for the past five to seven years, transportation fatalities, roadwork fatalities were the number one cause of death under OSHA's categorization of deaths at work.

Jill James:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, interesting. I'm listening to you and I'm thinking about the insurance carriers driving the risk management, particularly in transportation, like you pointed out, until the DOT got things dialed in. People are often so, I guess, singularly focused on OSHA that they forget about the impact these risk carriers, these insurance carriers can have on a work environment. And people just forget about how to leverage them for their help. But also, you've got to get your stuff... If you think you're not going to be audited by OSHA, watch out, your insurance carrier's around the corner, and they may have a bigger financial impact on you.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

And it's so funny, because do you know right now, and I know you can attest to this, safety pros still struggle with improving their employees' behaviors on the road? No matter what they throw at it, because they don't all the time use a full risk-based approach. We understand safety well, we are practitioners. We learned how to implement programs, how to diagnose. We've learned how to review, diagnose, and provide you a solution for safety. But, we have not been as successful, and I'm only speaking of my little... Because I'm a sample of one, so I will preface that for your listeners.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

But every single company that I have worked at, they have struggled with driver compliance. And utilities actually has DOT drivers, CDL holders, because we drive the big line trucks. And guess what our number one target is at my current company, my last company. It is on the road behavior. And so, no matter what, here, we're .org, and we're new in our safety journey, and we're eventually going to have all the tools and tech to drive us to that. But, I can just divert back to my time at PODS and I was only there for 14 months, but I fixed their motor carrier in 13 months, which they thought was unheard of. And we didn't do anything magic. They were on the mandatory inspection. They were over in three categories for their CSA scores. And it was nothing magic. It was just putting in checks and balances, and utilizing a risk-based approach. And so, that's why I say that transportation safety is still untapped land, it's un-farmed. I mean, it's just growing wild. And we're going to have to build transportation safety leaders to meet the moment, basically.

Jill James:

And we are way behind. I mean, we are so behind that moment. Gosh.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Yes.

Jill James:

A lot to be done. So, I want to make sure that I circle back to three nuggets that you dropped a minute ago. One, your dissertation. And then, two and three, that you teach at two different universities. When, in your career, did you decide to seek out your PhD and work for that?

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

So, I started my PhD at 42. I got to about 40, because I applied to the '13 cohort. So I wanted to do it at 40, exactly 40 years old. With me, I'm very, put it on the board. I don't have an audience of the board. Not even that, I discuss it with my husband, it's something I will do. I put it on the board, I keep it under wraps, and I move towards it. But the reason that I endeavor was one only, and that was because I wanted to leave safety in a better place than I found it. When I got into safety, and you probably can attest to this too, we were just whack-a-mole-ing, we had great foundations of education, please don't get me wrong, but a lot of companies did not have a stratagem to say, "Okay, you got a safety person. Now, let's build a full foundation." If you even talk about safety management systems, we teach that now.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

We didn't learn that when we went to college. That is about a 15 to 20-year-old phenomenon. Since we have been in the business, we saw the rise of plan do checkout, dimming was always there, the association of continuous improvement and including safety in that conversation, it was not there.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

And so, I'm going to say, we've perfected that probably within the past 15 years, whether it was the international standards, which started off as OSES and now it's ISO, or whether you were even talking about ANSI Z10, you're talking about the early-2000s. You're talking about, we had been in safety for a minute. These things were introduced, but they were not matured, until probably we had been in safety for probably the first 10 years of our career, easily. And so, it was just, we whack-a-moled. We responded to the things that were the flavor of the hour.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

And, I wanted us to look at safety holistically. This is just my frame of mind, because not every company's going to implement a safety management system. But if you don't have these nuts and bolts, what do you do? And so, my goal was to go back, because I started to see a lot of safety leaders come out of college. One, the art of safety, because there is a art, there is a way we do this. Even though it is science-based, there is a way we do this, whether it is us starting to first get proximate to the people, the craft, building trust with them. Now, you're having these big fancy words, like psychological safety, and basically what they're saying is, "We don't know you. It would be no different if you took an animal in the wild who was injured and you tried to help. It would kill you, because it doesn't know you." And so, you got these YouTube university environments, where people learn things, they see safety as a lucrative profession. Some of the folks like people, some of them don't like people. You're having to say, "Hey, stop. These are real people's lives." And a lot of what we do, it is the art of finessing grown people to make them a part of that journey, because we can't force you to be safe. We can't make you do anything we want you to do, because you're full will, fully grown. Our job is to compel you. We would say, motivation, but it is to compel you, to give you the wise, to tell you, "This is what's going to happen if you don't do... But here are the options that you have." Because, for a year, safety was the master of no, instead of the master of how.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

And so, I just wanted to give back to make the world safer, to make sure that we're bridging these conversations with the new school of safety folks, so that we're doing a pass on. Got the degree, and I taught while getting the degree. So I received a fellowship from IUP while getting the degree, and a piece of that was to teach. So I taught intro and that sealed it, because same thing, a lot of people go in into safety, they know that it will pay them. They don't really know where to map and go. You start talking to them about things they like, and you're like, "Safety is such a broad net. You don't have to do, Fran, put on your hard hat. You can really do the studying side of safety, because it is a science. You can do the IH, the medical side. You can do ergonomics, that is still a medical side." And just opening the door to say, "You see all these green initiatives? These carbon initiatives? These sustainability things? Save the planet? That's the E in EH and S." And so, it is such a wide net that I feel like we were not bridging those conversations with the new generation. And I ended up mentoring more IUP students, "Dr. Fran, could you hang on?" "Sure." And they're like, "This is not about the homework. I just wanted to ask your advice." And so, I'm like, "Something is missing." It reaffirmed in me, not just for me supervising, but I'm like, "Something is missing." And, it's our job, not just to grow the profession, but to ensure that the profession lives when we leave, and that it is still centering the worker.

Jill James:

That's right. That's right. And I think if your dad was listening right now and he wanted you to have a side hustle, it would be to go and evangelize at every university possible, the things you just said, so everybody gets into this degree and into this profession. It was just beautiful. I loved how you framed that.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Thank you. But you know what, Jill? It's so funny what you just said. "Why can't we grow this profession?"

Jill James:

Yeah.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Yes, it is so interesting to me that our universities are not busting at the seams, because what we do is noble.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

I say this every day like, "I get to help save people, even when they don't even know you're saving their tails."

Jill James:

And it's saving companies money. I mean, it's both end, right? I mean, it is a noble profession and that's why I do it, that's why I still do it, because I know... You're always looking at your why, right? Every job, you're like, "Okay, what's my why?" It's always for the human being. And different iterations of your work impact human beings in different ways. And yeah, we do have to frame it around we're also going to help profit centers.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Oh, well, save money is made money. That's my number one phrase. I got that from my husband. He's like, "They love to tell you safety's not a P on the P&L." And I could thank some of my early compadres when I was in the .com sector, you are not a profit driver. And my husband said, "When you go back to work, you tell them save money is made money, because ask the accountant." He said, "At every day at two o'clock, they get to make money on the money that they're not paying out." I was like, "That's a good one."

Jill James:

Good. That's really good. So, tell our listeners, where are you teaching. Because if people are listening, they're like, "Dang, I want to go wherever Dr. Fran is teaching." Where are you teaching?

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

So, I teach at Texas A&M. And then, recently, I accepted a role at Columbia Southern as full-time faculty. And, at first, I was unsure about... Because I'm such a nuts and bolts and conservative, and you hear people say things good or bad. But, I know that in order to change something, you have to be a part of that conversation. So yes, I could have gone back to IUP, but I chose CSU, because they need Dr. Frans. They need people with some rigor, people who were raised in safety the old way to bring a lot of that. And actually, I love the staff that I'm working with there. And so, I mean, it's sad, because the person who was over the program passed away. And that was very sad, because he hired me and I never even got to meet him. He passed away shortly after a month after I was getting ready to start. And so, they lost track of me, and then they're like, "No, you're supposed to be teaching a class." And, once I started, and they built a team, because when Dr. Dan Corcoran passed away, they built a team of new people. And I'm actually encouraged. And so, I'm excited to see where this goes. And actually, our enrollment is way up. But, full-time faculty, it sounds more, I guess, iffy than what it is. It just means I'm committed to teaching at least two courses. And, it's not that bad, because right now, that's the way my little life is set up. I'm in this boring space. But, I'm happy I'm able to give back and I'm able to help the next generation of safety leaders.

Jill James:

Fantastic. Fantastic. So, as an educator yourself and someone who is educated, I'd like to talk about what you believe the baseline knowledge should be coming into this profession, and that right now there isn't a bar for us to pass.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

It's so interesting that you say that, because we are getting a lot of leaders from a non-traditional path. That is exciting. It is exciting, because I am a believer, especially people who work craft, who now get educated or not educated, they learn safety on the job, because they know the process, the people, the places, and they know the piece, right? When I'm selecting people, because I actually selected at my last utility a couple people who came straight from the craft, one was a supervisor, one just was good at what he did, I'm looking for initially a couple things. I'm looking at their people skills, because we are still in the people business.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

And, I can't shove ideas and concepts down your throat. I have to inspire you. But how can I inspire you? I can use education. Safety has their Es, the engineering, the education, the engagement. But people have to believe in who you are. So you have to be an ambassador first about who you are. And so, I'm always going to look at the soft skills, the empathy, the, "How are you with people? How are your soft skills? What is your bedside manner? What is your natural?"

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

And, I love curiosity, because the most curious people solve the best problems, right? We should always continue to ask questions. We learned in safety to keep asking why. Even if you're not asking why, you should have questions. And so, the best leaders to me are the most curious. And then, I want people who are willing to do the work. I talked to you earlier about there are ways to center these folks and get them with the right people. You're going to have to do a lot of modeling and a lot of mentoring. And modeling is, "How do we conduct our business?" Your team needs to be strong. Not saying that everybody needs to be an expert or a subject matter expert in everything, but it needs to have a strong way of operating, a strong operational culture. Now, that sounds like operations, but inside your core of your safety team, the way we normally do things needs to be somewhat systematic.

Jill James:

That's right.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Yeah, it can't be fought by the seat of your pants, because now, you're putting someone in there who is a non-traditional person, who doesn't have the framework, so to speak. And that could be catastrophic in and of itself, because they're dispensing advice. That's really what we do, we dispense the advice.

Jill James:

And then, it perpetuates the whack-a-mole thing.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Yes.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Or the cutting corners. You don't got to do that. When I was in that, I didn't have to do that.

Jill James:

Right.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

So, we have to have a lot of modeling. And people would say, "Why do we do it this way?" It's like, "Nobody cares." And I'm like, "No." And when you're explaining to them, you're like, "Yeah, on the surface, it seems like nobody cares whether we do this inspection this way. Although, it's supposed to give the public, and the shareholders, and the employees assurances, nobody cares. But, when something goes wrong, you're going to be glad we did it this way." Because now, not only can we answer the questions of what went wrong, what was the deviation outside of the system, we can know what to do differently the next time. When you're doing stuff all over the place, sometimes you don't even know really. It becomes a blame game, because you don't have a system and a framework to say what went wrong. And so, I would always say, "We're doing this to protect ourselves." Because, if there is ever a question about why we did something, it's according to our playbook and our framework. This was the next step. And so, no, nothing is ever perfect, but we need a playbook. We need a playbook of rules with how we conduct, whether it's an investigation, whether it's an interview, whether it is a mitigation after an incident. We need the playbook so that you check off the list, "Yep, we did that. We asked that question. We had the triage call right away, and this is what we did." Because, not only are you defending when somebody dies, your processes, you're defending your framework, your policies, your procedures, how you do things, why you did it.

Jill James:

That's right.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

So I always say it's protecting us.

Jill James:

Yeah, 100%. And, being able to have a system, especially when you're new to the profession, it gives you security. I'm listening to you and I'm thinking about one of my first mentors when I was a new 23-year-old at OSHA. And my mentor, Dale, he had been with the agency since I was born essentially, and then I got this job. And he said, "When you're an OSHA investigator, they give you a checklist of not the things to look for, but the legal things that you have to say, you have to share, you have to do, and gather, and all that stuff. So there's this long checklist that you go through." And Dale told me, he said, "Kid..." They all called me kid, because I was also one [inaudible 00:41:09]. And so, they didn't quite know even how to address me. So, they all called me kid. "Kid, whatever you do, always follow the checklist. Don't ever deviate from the checklist. Make sure you take it out even after you memorize it, take it out and actively check those things off. Do it every single time." And he said, "Because you know what? One of these times you're going to get thrown some real weird curveballs in this job, and you're going to go back to that checklist. And the checklist is what's going to keep you centered. And he was so right. You go into a place and someone's volatile, or they're yelling at you, because the regulator is in the house, or there's been a death and everybody's just a ball of emotion, whatever it was. Or, you walk in and you're not having the best day and maybe you're distracted in your mind by something. You always go back to that process and procedure and it keeps you consistent.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

I agree with that. I agree. And it was for your protection too.

Jill James:

It was. Yeah.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Yes. Because when we do stuff, it's something simple as the AED, when we train on that, we say, "Listen, you listen to the Proxima AED." "Why?" "Because if the person dies, if the person expires, a medical director is going to read the tape. They're going to know whether you followed what the machine told you. And when you don't follow that, what you're saying is, 'One, you're smarter than the machine and you're smarter than the medical director.'" And so, no, we know the machine has more technology in it than us, so we follow the prompts.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

And so, it's just that, and I mean, even when I told you, either, when you have non-traditional people, you're going to have a Cadillac system to wrap around them, where they were the Cadillac candidate and you give them Pinto instructions, or they came with a long arc in background, or you're going to have the Cadillac program to train them and to get them. And, I know that's a bad way of being, you can take the person with little knowledge and you can allow them to conform to your system. And that really was the great proverb of when you build it, they will come. If you build it, they'll follow it. If it's built right.

Jill James:

That's right.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Also, yeah, you got to knock down all the mess. Because people will say, these are just too many steps. And that's why I do love the new generation and on every one of my teams, even when I'm talking to students after class, during class, I always tell them they're the problem solvers of today and tomorrow. I save space for new people. My current job, we had no new people. You got to have new people, young, fresh blood, lower ranking people straight out of the gate, so that you train them so that they can grow into the bigger roles. And then, you give them a path to promotion. And that was something that I'm fortunate at my current organization, when I got here, I want to write everybody a path to promotion, so that they don't feel like someone has to die for them to move up, that they can move up by following steps. And they gave me that here. So, I'm really blessed here.

Jill James:

And I think that having new people coming in with fresh eyes and less experience keeps you as a mature professional, evolving, because it makes you go back and think about, "How am I going to present this? How am I going to tell..." Always having to deal in my professional practice, and because of the places that I've worked and the whack-a-mole things that I've done in my career and where I am now, I just start at a baseline knowledge of zero with every single person I meet. I make the assumption they don't know anything. They don't have a baseline, and you can calibrate that really quickly, but my starting line is always, "They're not going to know any acronym I'm going to talk about." Whatever, whatever, whatever. And then, the second I discover that, "Oh, okay, they know a little bit about this, or they know about that, or they know more than I do about..." Then you can take it a different way. But, my baseline is zero, and it keeps me sharp.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Yeah. And also, I think, it keeps us humble, because they know technology. They're digital natives.

Jill James:

Yes, yes.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

They come, "Oh, give it to me. I can fix it." And, literally, the first time I ever cast it from my phone many years ago to a computer, because I didn't even know that was possible. I was like, "We don't have this." They were like, "No, no, no. You can cast from your phone." I was like, "What do you mean a kid?" I don't like to say kid, because he was a 20 something. He was like, "Give me your phone. You got to trust me, Fran. Dr. Fran, give me your phone, casted it right in front of the phone." I said, "Well, I'll be..." And so, that started for me too, when I took a parks excursion. Every time I work, I break up utilities, I normally go into something transportation orientated, but I did do a short stint to broker back com with my kids at a park in Orlando before I moved to Texas. And, I was surrounded every summer, everything by 7,000 16 to 21-year olds.

Jill James:

Wow.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

And that is who the biggest audience of our safety programs were for. And we did a lot of fun things, whether it was college interns brokering some of those conversations, because we had a lot of interns. Brokering those in safety, brokering those conversations with the workforce, the front lines. But, we did a lot of neat things because kids are the future. People say stuff like, "If you control the kids, you control the future." That is true. They are the future. And, they actually know lots of things. I tell people every day, "I learn more from my 20 somethings, especially my daughter, than I probably learned from some of my peers, because I mean, although we have great plasticity in our brain, we can learn at any age as long as we're alive. They are so naturally curious, right? And if they have parents who have been smothering, because I'm a smother mother, sometimes they learn stuff that you don't want them to learn. But then, it turns out to be helpful because my daughter would say, "Mom, you told me not to do this, and I did it anyway, but hold on. No judgment. This is a better way of doing it." And sometimes, I've had to apologize and say, "You are a hundred percent right. This is the best way to do that." And I'm not talking about with just little things in life I'm talking about with big things. They teach me... So it is a humility to say, I know a lot of things, but so do you.

Jill James:

100%. And, I think, you and I are both Gen Xers. And, I mean, we both have time left in our careers for sure. But we are also setting up, what you talked about before, legacy and who we're going to attract to this profession and you're right? We, as we start and continue to bring people into our profession, oh my gosh, we have so much to learn from them. And, I guess, the thing that's been most interesting to me, curiosity wise, when I first started working with younger people, I'm like, "Eh, I was a little bit full of my own ego wondering what could they teach me?" And then, immediately, I figured it out. And it was collaboration. Because as Gen Xers, we kind came up doing a lot of things on our own.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Yeah, first generation.

Jill James:

Yeah, solo work. Solo work. And then≤ all of a sudden, they're like, "Well, we could do this together." Oh my gosh. My favorite thing now is collaborating with people. I love it. But that's not how I started. But that's what I learned from younger generations.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

They also taught me a couple things. One, you could be different. I think that there was such a school of safety that when we got into safety, you had to be the same. You got to do it the way Bob showed you. You got to do it the way Dan and showed you. And these folks come in and they do it their way. And, it teaches us that there aren't a lot of ways to get to the same desired ≤outcome. And it teaches us that there is still independence in safety. We teach a lot of collaboration. We teach a lot of less consensus build. And you still have to be a leader of consensus, and you have to collaborate. But there is still independence where there is space for you to have independent thought and to do things singular. Because we have the science in our background. Many scientists are independent thinkers. They go into their labs, they come out, "I got it." And, a lot of times, in big larger organizations, they don't like that. They want to tear it apart. And sometimes I'm just saying, "I'm going to listen to that." Tell me, walk me front to back your whole thought process. And I get quiet and there's sometimes I smile and I'm like, "That shit works. It's going to work." And I affirm it right there. And I'm like, "So when did you think of this?" And it has forced me to start going more into the lab, because we have to be on stage all the time, right? You're the safety leader. You're the head piece of safety. You have to shake hands, kiss babies, give the speeches, motivate, inspire. You're the accountability. You're who they see, regardless if you've got 100 people that work for you. And so, you're always on stage, when do you have that time to tinker, to be creative, to really get into critical thinking? And that was something, even when I wrote my dissertation that I relished, I don't want to say it too loud, that it was my research. And, despite my academy saying, you can't do this, you can't do that. I just kept endeavoring until finally it worked. And then even my advisor, Dr. Christiana, said, "He's retired now. Had to say it worked. You got a big sample size." But, there were times where I was believing him, it wasn't going to work, but I just kept moving forward. So I do think there is independence. We're going to have to have people who can go in the lab and come up with ideas and bring it back to the masses. You still have to collaborate. You still got to build consensus and make us believe in your idea. But, the fact that you believe so much in it that you did the work, I applaud that because we tend to want to take the science out of safety. We are safety scientists. We are trying a lot of things that have been proven, whether it's our threshold limit values, whether it's our permissible exposure limits, A lot of that stuff is steeped in science and math, and it's proven. But imagine the people who came up with that. They had to be in the labs, right?

Jill James:

Yeah, I mean, that's the fun part of hearing about where you began this conversation talking about the regulations and where did they come from, and being written in blood. And that's the science. That stuff had to be proven, in order to pass those laws, with the exception of a couple goofy ones like, split rim toilet seats. And, I still don't know what the science was behind that law. I mean, thankfully, they threw that out a long time ago. But yeah, if we dissect them, it all is science-based,

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

And then, they probably thought the scientist who said, this is the limit value. This is the amount of RADS you can be exposed to, or whatever. How do you know? And it all sounded crazy till it wasn't so crazy. Right?

Jill James:

Yeah. Right, right, right.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Yeah.

Jill James:

How funny. Oh gosh, I lost my train of thought on something I wanted to ask you. We were talking about what makes a good leader, and you were talking about empathy and science. Was there anything else that you wanted to talk about?

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

I love curiosity.

Jill James:

Yeah, curiosity. Yes, yes.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

The most curious, answer the biggest questions. We could always say that we're out questions, but I think in safety, I have questions until today.

Jill James:

Oh, yeah.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

I have questions. Oh, yeah. I'll look at something and say, "Okay, now I know what the reg says on this, but..." Well, I'll give you one. So, I called Department of Transportation, because they have their wonderful clearing house. And, they wrote the regulations to include CMVs of 10,001 pounds or greater. So that means, you are driving a commercial motor vehicle, when you tow your boat, when you tow anything that exceeds 10,001 pounds, 10,000 pounds. But you wrote all the regulations, everything is centered around CMVs. But, when you created the clearing house, you delineated it only to CDL holders. So, I worked at a company where we pulled things that were right up to the 26, but it didn't exceed the 26, so the drivers didn't have to have a CDL. Well, we had people, because we had a random program, we treated all of our CMV drivers the same. We put them in a random program. But the CDL holders were in the federal random. But the non-CDL were in the company random. Long story short, we had people popping positive in the non-CDL random. So, I contacted DLT, I wrote them an email, said, "Listen, I think this is a gap, because the intent of the reg was to deal with things that were bigger, that could cause catastrophic loss on the nation's roadways. But we are firing people from one company to the next, and because you have this space for last mile carriers, you really should have clearing house for anyone that operates a CMV, since all the code of federal register is centered around CMVs."

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

They wrote back, "We don't have jurisdiction." So, I wrote them back with a specific scenario, "What would you have me to do? This guy's driving now." Gave him a specific set of information. "The person now is driving for this company, and they are pulling vehicles up to this." They wrote back, "Thank you so much for your passion, but we don't have jurisdiction." So, to me, "Why were people not questioning that you wrote a whole set of codes for CMVs 10,001 pounds or greater, that is your federal definition of a CMV. But all of the harshest regs, the mandatory drug testing, the mandatory application and reporting is only isolated to drivers with a CDL?" Interesting, right? So I wrote that to them, wrote that to them. And then, finally, they probably was like, "Girl, quit writing us. We're not going to do anything." And this was recent. This was in 2021, early 2022. So, I always have questions about why we're doing some of the things we do, and is there a better way? With the introduction of tech, why do we still have this in the regs? We know technology is doing this manual task.

Jill James:

That's right.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

So, remove it, right? But, they don't.

Jill James:

I mean, yeah, questioning authority, that has got to be our job. I mean, that's part of what we have to continue doing. Yeah, I hear you. It's not our jurisdiction.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

It's their definition. They even need to change the definition of 26,001 gross volume weight. Or if you're going to do 10,001 gross volume weight, then everybody who drives 10,001 for business purposes should be included in the pool.

Jill James:

That's right. That's right. That's good. Yeah. This is why there's public comment periods on things, except for I feel like we should take bunches of regulations together and go, "Hey, let's have a public comment period about this one. And what's happening."

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

It just takes so long, right?

Jill James:

It does.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

And that's how we know that OSHA is not driving the Safety Pros future, because I got a lot of people with different administrations coming in and out saying, "Oh my God, we're not going to have an OSHA." And I actually questioned them like, "Do you really believe that, that safety is going to go away, you're not going to have a profession?" Well, I had a [inaudible 00:57:51] to tell me that, "One day you're not going to have a job, because they're going to get rid of OSHA." And I said, "Oh, you think that?" And they were like, "Yeah." I said, "No, we'll have jobs." And I said, "And matter of fact, we'll have more jobs because risk will be so abundant and it will need to be managed." And they were like, "How can you be so sure?" I'm like, "Because OSHA was never our fate anyways. It was always the insurance carriers. I'm not going to write you something and have to pay out 10 times the value of what I wrote it for. That's not good business practices. And I'm not going to let you kill people that I'm on the hook for settling with, because you have no risk mitigation strategies in your house to prevent a lot of this stuff." So, that's the beauty of us, Jill, being able to teach, right?

Jill James:

Yes, it is. Yes, it is. And I think that anyone who's fretting over the future of our career, I hope you just heard what Fran said. I do. I do. I mean, I hope it's not the case that we have a more target-rich environment than we currently have. I hope that's not the case. But, I agree with you. I agree with you. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good thing.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

Hey, I mean, the cost of risk. When I got into safety, we didn't have things called nuclear claims. Let's just put that on the table. Nuclear, meaning we could put you out of business, we could put you out of business into austerity forever. We could put your kids out of business. Nobody's going to tether themselves to all these uninsured losses, right?

Jill James:

Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

And the insurance companies are not going to write an open checkbook for companies. I mean, even the excess carriers over the past five years have asked for more safety efforts. And this is an excess carrier, meaning you have to just deplete your first layer of coverage, meaning it's risk beyond a certain amount for the excess carriers to even think about paying, and they're even making sure that your safety is buttoned up. And so, I talked in some companies to excess carriers. My past two companies that were .com, more so, my prior utility that was .com. I talked to their excess carriers more than I talked to our current carriers about our safety efforts, what we're doing, how do we perceive risks, what are we doing to block and tackle? And I went to my CEO at the time, I'm like, "This is troubling that the excess carriers..." And they were like, "That's becoming the insurance market right now. They really want to mitigate risk."

Jill James:

Mm-hmm. Fantastic. So if everyone listening to this podcast would go out and recruit at least one person to be a future safety leader, now's the time. Now's the time.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

It is. It is.

Jill James:

So, Fran, as we wrap our time up today, realizing that it's December 20th, we are just coming in at the end of 2024, I believe this will be our last release episode for 2024. Any final thoughts and words about closing out this year?

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

I want to talk directly to Safety Pros, because a lot of times we spend our time caring for others. So this has been my year of 2024 to start caring for myself. Thank God I'm healthy. But, having lost someone, I realize that we run to trauma. Anytime somebody gets hurt seriously, or not so seriously, or if you've had to witness a fatality, we run to that. And, never do we ever nurture ourselves back to normalcy. We move on. EAP is for the frontline and for the people who work close, in most cases, to the injured worker or the worker that died. And so, I want to leave all of us, the safety community as a whole to say, start nurturing yourself. I'm not going to use the word self-care, because I think, I spoke on this on my podcast that I think safety is a nurture science. You don't even hear that unless you're talking about mothers. But, it is a part of how we nurture people, we are preventative element. But when things go wrong, we move the organization back to their state of normal. And a lot of that is us nurturing that thing, checking on it, looking over it, making sure that everything is back to normal, and making sure that the employees are okay. I want us to do our own self checkup and say, "Are we okay?" Many of us work in a high hazard footprint, and you got to take that time for yourself. So as you close out '24, think about yourself moving into the next year, and how are you going to nurture yourself so that you are a better leader for next year, because that is what I'm closing my year with, a lot of quiet, reflective time, and just outdoor time, because it's good for the soul, to give back something to myself. Because when you take a loss, that's when you really stop and say, "Life is really that fragile."

Jill James:

Right.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

So, that's what I'll leave you with.

Jill James:

Oh, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. It's done. I'm with you. I'm not into the word self-care, because that just brings up smelly candles and bubble baths. And that's not self-care. That might be nice, but taking stock of who you are, and whose you are, and yeah, what's your touch tree? Is it nature? Is it your family? Is it reading? Is it reflection? Is it writing? Is it quiet and being okay in the quiet? That's fantastic. That's fantastic. So thank you for that. And thank you so much for being on the show and taking the time to do this today.

Dr. Fran Scott-Diehl:

I really enjoyed this and I'm thankful that you invited me to your platform and Happy New Year.

Jill James:

And Happy New Year to you. Thank you, Dr. Fran. And thank you all for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good. May our employees and those we influence know that our profession cares deeply about human wellbeing, which is 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 to read the transcript and listen, you can go and find the podcast 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 health and safety professionals like Dr. Fran and I. And, special thanks to Emily Gould, our podcast producer. Until next time, thanks for listening.