Jill:

This is the Accidental Safety Pro, brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded July 9, 2021. My name is Jill James, HSI's chief safety officer, and today I'm joined by Christina. Christina is a safety manager with a shipping company in Florida. Welcome to the show, Christina.

Christina:

Thanks so much for having me, Jill. I've been trying to get on this show forever.

Jill:

I love to hear the sound of that. People want to be on the Accidental Safety Pro. I love it. This podcast turned three years old in May. Can you believe three years old? That's so-

Christina:

I know. That's great.

Jill:

And thank you for being a listener yourself, and thanks for your interest in wanting to come on and share your story. I'm really interested to hear.

Christina:

Yeah, and I got to shout out my friends at HSI, Susannah and Tim, who've been with me from the start.

Jill:

Oh, that's awesome. They're going to love to hear that. Good people. Good people at HSI. Thank you for that.

Christina:

Yes, they are. Yep.

Jill:

Yeah. And I know we're going to dig into your whole story, but the other thing I wanted to shout out is I think you're my first guest who is here with maritime experience. We don't always have somebody who can talk about that, particularly maritime and compliance and healthy and safety and the winding ... I shouldn't say road, because that would be wrong, because it's not a road. It's a body of water.

Christina:

Stream, river.

Jill:

Christina, with no further ado, tell us how you got into this field.

Christina:

Well, I didn't start out, no surprise. When I went to college at University of Connecticut, I had gone in thinking that I was going to become a pharmacist by the time I graduated. That didn't quite work out, so after two years, I didn't want to start all over again and I was looking, "Well, what else can I do that's similar to health and stuff and has some of my interest still?" I didn't want to just change my major completely and do a whole different thing where I had to start over in four years. So I found the occupational safety and health program, and I was still able to graduate on time.

Jill:

Always a bonus.

Christina:

Yes. My parents liked that very much. Before I graduated, I interviewed for a job and I had one, which was great. And then after I graduated, I started two weeks at a safety and environmental health consulting firm out of Connecticut, where I got so much experience. I mean, all kinds of manufacturing plants, some construction. I did a lot of environmental stuff.

Jill:

Yeah, it's a great way to see so many different industries and decide like, "Do I really like any one of these? Or do I like the variety?"

Christina:

Right. And it was good, too, because at the end of the day, you could go home. You didn't work for one of these companies. You just consulted with them. And I got to travel a lot, which was great. I still get to travel now on my current. But I just got a lot of experience from that job before I decided, "Okay, I don't like Connecticut anymore. I got to move to Florida."

That's how I got to my job now where I just was online one day, I was like, "I need to be somewhere either on the West Coast or the East Coast of Florida, near a beach, near some body of water." I applied for-

Jill:

So lifestyle-

Christina:

Sorry, go on.

Jill:

So lifestyle was your driving factor in picking an industry. You wanted location.

Christina:

Yes.

Jill:

That's awesome. Okay.

Christina:

Yeah. I was tired of the cold and the snow. Keep telling people in my family, I'm like, "Hey, now is the time to move down."

Jill:

Oh, that's funny. Coming from the Midwest, I understand, and I think actually Connecticut's got some more horrendous winters than even Minnesota recently.

Christina:

Yeah. And just down in Florida, there's more stuff to do year-round. It's just great. But anyways, I got the job. I moved down within like two weeks. And I started here as a safety coordinator, and been able to work my way up to safety manager, which right now we're currently looking for a safety coordinator. But from the time I started until now, the safety program has pretty much been mine, which has been great.

They've given me just free to make the safety program mine, and our company really values safety here. It's our number one priority. And I've been able to see a great change from when I first started until now, to see how especially management has changed their tune on safety, where everything that we do now, we always start with a safety moment, a risk assessment, whatever it may be, just to make sure that we cover all those bases before we go into a new project.

Jill:

Well, how lucky is that to be able to have free rein to create a program from the ground up and be supported along the way? That's phenomenal. You talked about your education path and you thought it was going to be pharmaceuticals, and here you are ending up in consulting and now in the shipping industry. But I think you had a story to tell how a seed of safety got planted in you as maybe a little girl.

Christina:

Yeah, I did. And I didn't come to that realization probably until a few years ago, but I remember probably when I was around eight years old, I had come home from school and my dad's sitting on the stairs outside with his shoulder all wrapped up. He fell off a ladder at work, and I didn't think anything of it at the time. And only until recently, a few years ago, I went back and asked him. I said, "Hey, Dad." I said, "Do you remember when you fell off that ladder a long time ago? Was that your fault?" And more or less he said yeah, because he wasn't paying attention or something.

But fast forward a few years ago now, probably like three years ago, my dad became a training coordinator for his carpenters' union where now he's on the other side, teaching OSHA classes and everything. We have that special bond now, so I think that's been pretty cool to see that evolve from, he's been in construction his whole life, and now to be on the other side of it. I just think that's been great for something for us to share. And who knows? Maybe that did plant the seed years ago and I just didn't realize it until recently, but I think that's been really neat for us to have that special bond.

Jill:

Yeah. Right. And maybe in some way, it made you hyper-aware of things that can go wrong.

Christina:

Yeah, because I always tell my employees, "Whatever you learn here, you can also take it home as well." Because my end goal is to make sure that you come to work and you leave the work the same way. All your fingers, all your toes, because people rely on you at home. Your family, your kids, whatever it may be, and I want to make sure that at least I've done everything I can to make sure that happens.

Jill:

Yeah. Right, exactly. That's it. That's the biggest motivator. We want to be able to live our lives the way we want to live them and choose places like, "I want to live next to the ocean, and I want to follow a career for that." How lucky is that? That's awesome.

So here you are working in the shipping industry, and are you a sole operator right now? Because you're looking for a helper, so you're doing this job on your own?

Christina:

Yeah, pretty much. It just me running the safety show right now. Anything and everything to do with safety goes through me.

Jill:

Yeah. Right. So, your start in consulting, it sounds like, maybe set the pace or set the groundwork for you to be able to do this work solo. How is it that you have been able to win people over as you started in this position from the ground up? Yeah.

Christina:

Yeah. So definitely as a consultant, I got to see different businesses and how they operate, so I think I've been able to pull a little bit from each of the ones. Obviously there was ones that I went to that had a great safety program. We were just there to help supplement that. And then there's other places I've been to where they had no safety program, so it was like we were starting from scratch with them.

But being a consultant, you get to work with all different kinds of people, and I think that was great for me, because again, whenever you start a new job, you have all these different kinds of personalities. You have to learn what pushes this person's buttons versus them, what motivates this person, to try to get the best out of them. So I definitely think that first job I had did a great job of laying the foundation to help me get to where I am now as a manager.

Jill:

Yeah. And since you're not all that far from having graduated, what have you found to be most useful from your degree program that you've leaned into as you're also learning all these people skills?

Christina:

During my degree program, I took a lot of different classes. I remember one class was all on HAZWOPER, and we actually got certified for that, so that was great. One class was about safety management, which is more relevant now for me than it was earlier, but I think still knowing those original principles has been able to help me a lot. We did a class on OSHA standards, how to look them up and what they mean and everything.

There was a wide variety of classes that helped me, and also we had some hands-on experience, as well. We would go walk around the campus and see if we could spot any hazards, which was really cool, too, because there's a lot of things that people walk by every day now and don't even realize. But now I can't help, every time I walk by a fire extinguisher, to check the tag to see it's up to date.

Jill:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). It's an occupational hazard to have your eyes trained to see all of those things. I've not found a way to turn that button off. After 27 years of this, I can't turn that button off. It's just the way that my eyes view the world.

Christina:

Yeah. And always looking for an emergency exit when you go into a new place or something. It's like, "Okay, if something happens, how do I get out of here?"

Jill:

Yep. These are conversations I've had with my son many times when we're in public places. It's like, "Okay, here's our safety plan. You see the exits? Are primary is here. Our secondary is here. This is going to be where our gathering place is," if we're going to a concert or we're in a mall or we're in church or in an auditorium. Yeah. Anyway, it's been a long time since I've had that kind of conversation with COVID.

Christina:

Right.

Jill:

Oh, man. All right. So, here you are in the shipping industry, and you have a unique opportunity in this part of your career to be able to ... when it comes to compliance, you've got a couple of different entities you're looking at. I'm wondering if you can talk about how you've tackled all those, because you have maritime, I'm guessing you have general industry for when your employees are working not on the water, and I think you had mentioned to me that you're in charge of security, too.

Christina:

Yeah, it's a lot. But we definitely have to be OSHA-compliant of course, because we have a warehouse and a maintenance shop. But we also have to deal with the Coast Guard, too, in our marine terminal, which has a whole different set of standards, especially when it comes to security. And also, we have to deal with customs and border protection.

So they're constantly in our facilities, whether it's checking containers or making sure all the paperwork is correct. So we have a good balance of a lot of federal agencies we have to have good relationships with, because they're in and out in here. We have to make sure, again, we have like 100% compliance, otherwise that could lead to huge fines. And the shipping business is very small. Everybody knows each other, so that stuff doesn't stay quiet for long.

Jill:

Interesting. Yeah. So when you came to this organization, Christina, and you're like, "Oh my gosh, I have to know what I learned in school about 1910 ..." Maybe you didn't learn very much about maritime. I know I didn't in my degree program.

Christina:

No, I didn't.

Jill:

And then it's border protections and security. How did you triage how you were going to decide where to start?

Christina:

Yeah. Just a lot of the first few months when I first came here, it was just me watching, because I knew general industry and stuff, but I didn't know our specific business. We're different from most shipping carriers, because we do everything from A to Z, from the size of a cell phone to a bulldozer, and we do all the stuff in between. So if you want to know how the sausage is made, this is what our company does.

Jill:

Awesome. I'm singing a song from Hamilton in my head right now, when you said that. Okay.

Christina:

But anyways, so it was just a lot of watching and observing, because I didn't want to come in and seem like, "Oh, I know all the OSHA regulations. You're not supposed to be doing that. You're not supposed to be doing this." So the best way for me to learn was just to watch and ask questions. I had never seen a top pick before, so within the first couple of months, I got trained on that. Don't ask me to drive one now, because I won't, but ...

Jill:

So for our audience who doesn't know what a top pick is, can you describe it?

Christina:

Yeah. It's a machine that picks up shipping containers, and you put them in stacks or you take it down and put it on a chassis or something. But yeah, it's a transporting device for containers.

Jill:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). And it sits on the shore or on the ship?

Christina:

Oh, no, it's on the shore. It's on these giant wheels that are taller than me.

Jill:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, interesting. So you're getting to see all kinds of interesting equipment. That's, in and of itself, your description of just taking time to watch and learn the business, so smart. So smart. You're observing the hazards. You're learning how, like you said, the sausage is made, and you're learning who all the roles are with the employees. You can start determining what you want to tackle first, second, and third.

Christina:

Yeah. Definitely, because again, the employees are the ones who are doing the job. They wouldn't take well to me telling them how to do, when I don't even know what the job is. That's our best asset, is our employees. They know the job better than anybody.

Jill:

That's right. Yeah.

Christina:

Especially when we do ours JSAs, I go to them first. "Hey, tell me how to do this job."

Jill:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). That's right. Don't make a guess. Yeah, go to the people with the historic knowledge. Yeah. So in your education, you learned how to read the regulations, and you probably learned a lot about 1910 and 1926. For people who are listening who are like, "Oh, man, I don't know if I want to ..." how scary is it to jump into the land of yet another set of regulations? Was it tricky for you, or were the themes similar when you started reading the maritime standards?

Christina:

It's pretty similar. Safety is safety. If something doesn't look right, it probably isn't right. There definitely were things I would have to look up for sure like, "Oh, do we have a different fall protection standard here versus construction? Or what's the rules say about working near water?" Those things, definitely, I had to look up. But for the most part, again, if something doesn't look right, it's probably not right. So you probably shouldn't be doing it if you have to question it.

Jill:

Yeah. Right. You've been at this job now for how long?

Christina:

Just over five years now.

Jill:

Oh, wow. Well, congratulations. That's a big milestone.

Christina:

It is. Yep.

Jill:

Yeah. And I think you've done something unique with your company in this last year, if I'm remembering right. You did something for a first time with the-

Christina:

Yeah, actually. Last month, we just had our first ever Safety Week, which is great.

Jill:

So tell us, what does that sound like, or what does it entail, for people who are listening who are like, "Ah, Safety Week, what could that be?"

Christina:

Sure. Yeah. Since June is National Safety Month, we wanted to do something that recognizes our employees and put a spotlight on safety, so we had a whole week dedicated to things related to health and safety. We had a chiropractor come in. We had a massage therapist. We had a food truck. We had a representative for our insurance company come in and do talks about hazard recognition and general safety awareness.

Jill:

Good idea.

Christina:

Yeah. And probably one of the coolest things we did was a forklift obstacle course.

Jill:

Okay. What was that like? Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Christina:

So we set up a course with cones and everything, and we said, "The operator who can complete the course in the fastest time will win a gift card." Obviously in a safe speed. You can't be speeding through. But we had great participation throughout the whole week. We ended on a food truck and a raffle, and really just, again, put the focus on safety, because this is what makes our company run. If we don't have employees, we don't have a company.

But probably one of the most important things we did is we put up a board in all our facilities, and it said, "Why I'm safe." And I asked every employee to put their reason on there for being safe, whether it was for family, for kids, for their pets, whatever it may be, and to use that reason as a reminder why you choose to come to work safely, because that's your why. Everybody has their own personal why. Just to remember, again, you choose to be safe for whatever that reason is. And we still have those hanging up, which is great, because I want people to see that every day when they come in.

Jill:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, I have a colleague in safety whose company did something similar, in a way, of remembering their why. And they took kids' art, children of the employees, and essentially papered a main hall that everybody walks through with all these kids' art from families that worked there as a reminder of, "We're going home whole and safe to these families, and we're here as a big family that goes to another family."

Christina:

Right. And as a safety professional, that's what you want. You want for everybody to go home to their family, so I think it was great. And we had a great week. We had great turn out. We were able to put this all together in just about two months.

Jill:

Wow.

Christina:

Yeah. For a first time, I think it came out really well.

Jill:

Yeah. And it sounds like you were focusing on whole health for us as humans when you said you brought in a chiropractor and a massage therapist and presenters from your insurance company to present on safety. How was that in terms of when you pitched it to your management team? Particularly the non-typical safety piece, like a massage therapist and a chiropractor. Was that hard to sell or how did that go?

Christina:

No. Everybody hears massage, they're like, "Yeah, sign me up." We had to limit spots, because we didn't have the massage therapist for all that much time. But yeah, it was great. And especially when the chiropractor came in for the office personnel that are sitting at desks, I think they really connected to that the most, because the chiropractor was able to look at their work station and see, "Okay, well maybe you need to raise this monitor up or put your chair down a bit." They really responded well to that, just to see ... because a lot of times the safety stuff doesn't really apply to the office personnel as much, so we wanted to make sure this whole week was all-inclusive for every employee we have.

Jill:

Yep. Office ergonomics is a big deal. And if you can mitigate those risks for those aches and pains for employees' necks, shoulders, hands, and arms ... That pain is real, and it's a really good thing to pay attention to. That's awesome.

You mentioned you brought in some people from your insurance company. Can you talk about that? I think that's an underutilized resource for many of us, particularly those of us who are solo operators. And sometimes people forget that that's a lever that you can pull as a help aid, so can you talk about that?

Christina:

Yeah, sure. We belong to an insurance mutual, and they have all these great benefits. They'll do trainings. We just had a safety leadership for management training a couple months ago that they put on for free. They'll come in and do audits. They were gracious enough to help out with Safety Week.

But I think it's great to have a good relationship with your rep, because they offer all these things that sometimes you don't even know about. On their website, they have all these templates for plans and everything is on there, and even I haven't taken enough advantage of it, but it's on there. Just because they work for the insurance company doesn't mean it's a bad thing. They want to see all the good things that you're doing.

Jill:

Right. They want to see all the good things that you're doing, and when it comes time for renewals for premiums, being able to show and showcase the things that you have can help your premium. Obviously your experience with injuries and illnesses come into play as well in their formula, but they're going to want to know that stuff.

But the great part with insurance companies and brokers ... When Christina's talking about insurance, it could be help that you might get from your workers' compensation carrier or your third party administrator with work comp. It could also be your property and liability. It could also be your insurance broker, if you work with a broker. So all of those entities employ safety health professionals. They are often called risk consultants in the insurance world, and they often employ or contract with industrial hygienists, as well.

And I know if you have to do some monitoring or air monitoring, you can call one of your insurance lines and say, "Hey, do you have an IH who might be able to do this for us for free or a discounted rate versus us trying to find a consultant in the ether?" And it's nice to have another set of eyes to come in. Christina, you said you've had them come and do some hazard recognition for you. That's a brilliant thing to do.

Christina:

Yeah. I always think it's good to get fresh eyes in there, because there could be things that you walk by all the time and now see, and then somebody else comes in and says, "Hey, did you know this was here or not?" And you say, "Wow, I walk past that all the time." I love when people come in and do the audits, especially if they're not going to report to OSHA, right?

Jill:

Yeah. Right, exactly. It's a learning opportunity for everybody.

Christina:

Yeah. It's an opportunity for growth, too, to see, "Okay, this is what we're doing good on. This is where we need to improve on." It's not a bad thing. You want to see where you can get to.

Jill:

Yep. Absolutely. Yeah, every time I did an investigation as an OSHA investigator, people would say to me, "Oh, man, how did I miss that? Really? I've been walking past that thing for the last five years, 30 years, six months," whatever it was. I heard that so many times. And I always said the same thing, "Don't beat yourself up over it. Our eyes get comfortable with things, and it's good to have fresh eyes come in. And I'm certainly not going to see everything, and the next person's maybe going to see something else, and the next person after that is going to see something else." So it's really nice to build that coalition of helpers with the resources that you have at your disposal, particularly when you're probably already paying for those services.

Christina:

Exactly, too. Yeah, that's the thing, is you pay for this, so use it.

Jill:

Yeah. Right. So I know that you are one of those rare ducks in the world of safety who has a boss who says there's no budget when it comes to safety.

Christina:

Yes.

Jill:

Gosh, you're so lucky. So how does that work in the real world? Tell us what that's like, for those of us who are like, "What?"

Christina:

Yeah. When you hear, "We have no budget for safety," you're like, "Wow. Okay." But I also know that means I can't just go spend frivolously on whatever I want. If there's a need for something for safety, we'll get it done. That's what that means, is that safety comes first and we don't care what it costs. We'll do it if we need it.

I'm still very focused as far as trying other resources before I need to go spend a large amount of money, but if I need to, I know that I have the support. But it's great. Having the executive support has probably been one of the best things for my career, because I've been able to help grow this program and grow the culture. But if you don't have executive support, it's very hard to do that. It needs to start from the top down. So definitely not having a budget helps for sure.

Jill:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). So what does executive support look like in terms of your access to your leadership team? Do you have their ear, you walk in their office? Or do you have the opportunity to meet with your leadership team every so often for a check-in and present to them? Or how does that work?

Christina:

Yeah. The executive team is very accessible. If I have an issue, I'll just walk into my boss's office and let him know or send him an email. "Hey, we have this going on. What do you think about this?" I'll already source solutions and I'll let him pick for whatever it is. I like to do all the groundwork first before I go to present something. I want to make sure, if he's going to ask questions, I have answers for those already. And if I don't, I'll let him know, "Hey, I'll get back to you on this."

Jill:

Very good, Christina. That's a really good practice, because those of us who practice health and safety, we can't assume that our bosses know what we know. And most of the time they don't. So it's really wonderful that you're doing that groundwork to be able to present a problem and essentially a menu of choices like, "Here are various ways we could take care of this."

Christina:

Yeah. And also, the leadership team here is present. I mean, my boss goes to all the facilities every day, says hi to the people, comes in. That's a great thing, too, is that he's not just doing it just because, but he takes time to talk to people. He'll walk out on the floor multiple times a day, which is great just to have that presence there so people know that he's not just sitting in his office doing whatever. But he cares, and you can see that, so that's great.

Jill:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Christina, I know I'm asking some really specific nuts and bolts questions, but I think it's so good for our audience to hear practitioners and how they approach different things. I'm curious if there's any specific sort of data that you gather that you use for leverage or benchmarking what's happening in your industry, and of course where you work.

Christina:

Yeah, sure. We use the national data that comes out for our industry, and we compare it to our lost time injury rates, our total reportable injury rates every year. Every quarter, I update the numbers and we send it in to our corporate safety director so they can see all the different entities in our business, and see where we stack up versus the national average, whatever it may be. But there's certain things that I keep just for our business.

I definitely like to record all the near misses and all the incidents, but I also break it down as to where they're happening, in which department and see, "Okay, well if we have 10 incidents this month in this department, why is that happening verse we had none last month?" So yeah, it's definitely data-driven.

We're definitely evolving with technology. We were able to create our own in-house app last year. That's been really cool to get rid of a lot of the paperwork, so now everything's just done electronically, whether it's our near miss reporting, our facility inspections, our equipment inspections. Everything is done now through a phone or a tablet. It's been really good for that.

Jill:

Yeah. And the injury and illness data you were talking about, is that something that you're gathering through the OSHA 300 log, or are you doing it through work comp data, or both?

Christina:

Both, because not everything is recordable. But every incident that we have, even if it's something small, I have a folder for it. Just in case something comes back later, I have all the information for that. I'd rather us over-report than to not report at all. When I first started here, we had a problem with not reporting things, so I think we've turned that around and now we report everything, which I'd rather have that, so I'm good with that.

Jill:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). I did that, too, in one of my last positions. And it was a little bit of a leap of faith for my management team when I said, "I'm going to encourage our supervisors and all of our employees to report early and often." Because that helps, because things aren't catastrophic early and often, and you're finding out what those trends are so you can try to start mitigating any risk before something catastrophic happens. Yeah, that's cool.

Jill:

And you had mentioned that you're benchmarking against some industry numbers. Are you getting that from the Bureau of Labor Statistics or are you work-

Christina:

Yes.

Jill:

Yeah, okay. Yeah. So Bureau of Labor Statistics, BLS, for anyone who's maybe never heard of them before, oh my gosh, you can get lost on that website for days and weeks, because it's ... If you're a data-driven, want to geek out and really look at every slice of a workforce and what time of day things happen, tenure of things that happen, what's happening with your industry, you can drill right into your industry's NAICS code and just so much more. It's a wealth of information if no one has ever tapped BLS for data.

Christina:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. I don't go on the website. I get them sent from somebody at our corporate office. He just sends, "Here's the stuff for your industry." I'm like, "Great," because I don't want to go on that website.

Jill:

Nice. Yeah, it takes a special person, because like I said, you can get lost there for a long time. Yeah, that's awesome. So you had mentioned earlier that you get to travel for your work, and it sounds like you get to travel off the mainland sometimes too. What does safety look like when you're traveling? Particularly when you leave the mainland.

Christina:

Yeah. In the Caribbean Islands, safety is ... it's very different than here in the US. Obviously they don't have OSHA. But one of my challenges is to implement our program that we have here in the States to our employees we have in the Caribbean. We started with some guys were wearing sandals on the forklift, and no seat belts. We've turned that around where we'd say, "At least wear closed-toed shoes and please make sure, at least when on there, that the seatbelt is on at all times, please."

It's hard to monitor, because I don't go there all that often, but we did a forklift inspection app that they use now, too. So all the emails get sent to the maintenance department if anything's wrong with the forklift. We have eyes immediately on that. We did toolbox talks over there. I've done various safety trainings. And just meeting with the various port personnel in each different location has been great, as well, to see, "Okay, well do you need help from our side? What things do you like here? What things do we need to improve on?"

It's definitely been a challenge, but I think that, for the most part, people have been receptive to it. I remember sending one of our employees just a hard hat and a vest, and he was just so appreciative of that. It's the little things, things here that you wouldn't think of. I just gave somebody a vest that cost like $3, but to them, it's great. At least to feel a part of something, so you feel like you at least look the part, too. That's a big thing for them.

Jill:

Right. Have you been able to successfully grow any safety leaders there, since you said you don't get to go there very often?

Christina:

Yeah. I'm in constant communication with our various employees, and I'm like, "Hey, if you need anything, let me know. Or if something doesn't look right, send me a picture." I've definitely gotten a lot of pictures and videos from people where maybe they receive a container that's improperly loaded. So then I bring it back to our team over here and say, "Hey guys. This is what was sent over. Take a look at this and see what we can do better," or something like that.

So definitely people have spoken up, which is good, because sometimes we just think, "Oh, once it goes there, that's it." But they have a whole different set of challenges over there, because they don't have the same infrastructure we do. I mean, the roads have millions of potholes in them. So we have to make sure that our equipment is 100% before we put it on our boat and it gets over there, because if we don't receive something well, it's probably not going to end well. Yeah, they don't have the same resources that we do in the US, so it's been a challenge, but I think we're on the right track to getting where we need to be.

Jill:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Sounds like you're learning a lot. Yeah.

Christina:

For sure, yep.

Jill:

That's awesome. Well, as we're winding up our time together today, Christina, I'm wondering if there's anything you'd like to share with our audience or best practices or what you know for sure about our practice?

Christina:

I think in my short career so far as a safety professional, I would say take the time to get to know your employees. I think that's probably been one of the biggest lessons for me. And I'm still working on listening. I have little patience, but I think one of the best things I've done, at least recently in the past few years, is just take the time to listen. It's easy to come back at somebody and say, "No, you're not doing that right," but just take time to listen to see where people come from.

I'll leave you on this note. When I first started, I happened to be outside with one of the managers outside. And I turned around and I see an employee standing on top of a pallet that's raised by a forklift like 10 feet in the air, and the other employee in the forklift. Being a safety professional, you can't just not say something, so-

Jill:

That's not a safe ...

Christina:

That's a huge thing.

Jill:

Yeah, it is. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Christina:

So long story short, those employees ended up getting written up, which again, is never your intention as a safety person. You're not trying to be the cop. But anyways, and one of the employees, he was sour towards me for a little bit, but he came around afterwards and told me, he goes, "I know you weren't trying to get me written up." He goes, "Now I understand what your job is here." And now he's one of the best safety people I have out there, so I just think that, with some time and getting to know your people, you really can grow your safety culture. That's been probably one of the more rewarding experiences I've had being in safety.

Jill:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, when you have those wins. That's awesome. It makes the work worth it.

Christina:

For sure.

Jill:

One person at a time is often how it goes. Yeah. That's awesome. Christina, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for sharing your idea about why I'm safe board. I think that's great. And congratulations on successfully launching your first ever Safety Week. I hope you get to do it next year, too.

Christina:

Thank you so much, Jill. It's been great to be on here.

Jill:

Yeah, you're welcome. And thank you all for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good, making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day.

If you'd like to join the conversation about this episode or any of our previous episodes, you can follow our page and join the Accidental Safety Pro community group on Facebook. If you're not subscribed to the podcast yet 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. We'd really love it if you could leave a rating for us and a review on iTunes. It really helps us connect the show with more and more safety professionals like Christina and I.

And special thanks to Naeem Jaraysi, who is our podcast producer, and this is his first show. So welcome as the podcast producer, Naim. Really appreciate having you here. And everybody else, until next time, thank you so much for listening. Appreciate it.