Jill James:

This is the Accidental Safety Pro, brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded February 23rd, 2023. My name is Jill James, HSI's chief safety officer, and today my guest is Dr. David Daniels. Dr. Daniels is an EHS professional, podcaster, speaker, consultant with ID2 Solutions, a National Safety Council board member, a thought leader and culture warrior, and, as Dr. Daniels says, is also the son of a 14-year-old who got lucky. Dr. Daniels joins us today from South Fulton, Georgia. Welcome to the show.

Dr. David Daniels:

Good to be here. Good to be here.

Jill James:

Well, Dr. Daniels, how long have you been at the EHS career?

Dr. David Daniels:

Well, the truth of the matter is, if I count all of the years, this year would be 40 and a half.

Jill James:

Wow. You might hold the record on this show.

Dr. David Daniels:

Well, yeah, because, now, some might dispute that, because I actually started in the fire rescue service and people, even in the fire service, don't see themselves sometimes as safety people. But I figured out that I was a safety person pretty early in the fire service career, and finally realized I got dumped into the lagging indicator side of the system and preferred to be on the leading indicator side.

Jill James:

How did you get into the fire service?

Dr. David Daniels:

I was working construction in Seattle, Washington, and matter of fact, I'll tell this story, I was out on a sign crew, that was back in the days when they grabbed some kid, I think I was 19 or... Yeah, about 19 at the time, and working a construction job, they don't give you any training at all. They put a sign in your hand and it says, "Stop," and, "Slow," and you go stand out there and you do traffic. I had, again, no training. I don't even think I had a vest or anything, just stand up there with the paddle. And it doesn't get cold in Seattle all that often. The weather tends to be pretty mild, but this particular winter, it was cold, and I recall thinking to myself, "I wish a car would just come around the corner, hit me and kill me and take me out of my misery."

Jill James:

That's pretty extreme. Uh-huh, that's how bad it was?

Dr. David Daniels:

That's when I knew I needed to find something else to do. S, a colleague suggested, this is within a short period of time, "Hey, I'm going to go take the test to become a firefighter. You want to go?" I said, "Sure." We went and took the test. I passed it, he failed it, and the rest is history.

Jill James:

Oh my gosh. Wow. How long were you in the fire service?

Dr. David Daniels:

Active for 32 years.

Jill James:

Oh my gosh. You started out by talking about leading and lagging indicators within the fire service. What did that look like?

Dr. David Daniels:

Well, the lagging indicator part caught up with me quickly. I saw my first person die in front of me at 21 years old. I saw my first colleague get killed about a year later, and there was something about that that didn't seem to register with me. It didn't make a whole lot of sense. They told us that bad things would happen. But when you see it up close and personal, and over the course of the career, I stopped counting at 19. I think there are probably more than that. When I talk about safety, when I talk about a lot of these issues that some folks have read in books, I guess I feel a little bit differently about it, because these are real people. You name it, you name it. I've seen buildings collapse and people riding on motorcycles without the right gear, and people riding bicycles running into buses, I mean, you name it, you just name it. But in every single solitary case, there was a hazard that was not identified, not assessed, and not mitigated, and in virtually all of them, there was a psychosocial route to the hazard as well, that was just not paid attention to. Somebody said something didn't feel right, didn't look right. Their sixth sense kicked in and said, "I probably shouldn't do this." They overrode it, and something negative happened.

Jill James:

Yeah. Well, did this sort of awareness come to you pretty soon into it, and then did you think, "Gosh, I want and need to do more and different," or what happened for you [inaudible 00:04:46]?

Dr. David Daniels:

Well, it actually started pretty early. I was fortunate enough to be hired in one of the first recruit classes, so recruit class 41 in the Seattle Fire Department was the first class hired after we switched to a 24-hour shift, and after someone decided that wearing a self-contained breathing apparatus was actually mandatory. Because prior to that, none of my instructors, it wasn't mandatory. It was only mandatory for me. They didn't have to do it. So, when I got out on a firetruck, I came out of training with training. I didn't have the experience, but I did have training. So, the first building fire that I went to, I still remember, it was on 39th and Albion Place. I'm not sure what's there now, but in Seattle, in Northern part of Seattle, near the campus of the University of Washington. So, I ride up on this 1964 firetruck, riding on the back. We pull up, a big apartment's on fire. My officer gets off and goes one direction, the driver goes another, and they leave me standing there.

Jill James:

Oh my gosh.

Dr. David Daniels:

Literally. Again, I'm 21 years old, have never done this before for real, and they just ran off. So, I put my metal Survivair self-contained breathing apparatus on my back and went into this building and kind of bumped in a bunch of people. Nobody asked me what I was doing, nobody, I had a number on, so it said I was a recruit. Nobody asked me. So, I wandered around in this building on fire and eventually came back out and took my mask off, and we hopped on the truck and didn't even talk about it.

Jill James:

Oh, man.

Dr. David Daniels:

Because that was the culture at the time, people just did whatever they did. Again, this whole thing about being fortunate is, had I been in the industry maybe two years earlier, I wouldn't have put that mask on, because that's not what they told people to do.

Jill James:

Yeah. Wow.

Dr. David Daniels:

I could have ended up like many of my colleagues with cancer. I could have ended up other colleagues who got lost, trapped, and killed in buildings on fire. I could have gotten thrown off the back of the firetruck like another of my colleagues did. But the Lord was just smiling, or my mom's prayers were working, maybe it was a little bit of both.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm. You got lucky.

Dr. David Daniels:

Yes.

Jill James:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, when did you start making a shift and getting interested in health and safety?

Dr. David Daniels:

My first health and safety interest occurred, would've been early '90s. I was, again, at an incident in Downtown Seattle when the electrical vault was on fire, and I can hear it popping out-

Jill James:

Popping out.

Dr. David Daniels:

Yeah... And watching the buildings go dark in Downtown Seattle, block after block, after block. One of the battalion chiefs comes over to me, and I'm a captain at the time, and says, "Hey, you're going to be the safety officer." I go, "Okay."

Jill James:

What's that mean, right?

Dr. David Daniels:

Exactly. I had no idea what it meant. I had no idea what my role was. They were checking a box, because that's, at the time, what we did. We checked the box. I eventually ended up being assigned as a battalion chief safety officer and the deputy calls and says, "Hey, we're trying to do a better job at having folks in this office, go see if you can figure out how to get a certified." So, I, "Okay." I went to a group called the Evergreen Safety Council. Come to find out, they had a safety and health specialist certification program that was fairly highly regarded in industry, but nobody in the public sector had ever come to a class. At least I didn't think so. So, I went to the class and come to find out it also, everything that they taught was consistent with the NFPA standard, National Fire Protection Association standard, at the time. So, I was the first person to get a dual certification as a safety and health specialist, and a fire service, health and safety officer. And that was now, boy, 33 years ago.

Jill James:

Oh, it's so fun to hear people's origin stories when we are at the tip. That's awesome. Yeah.

Dr. David Daniels:

That was my first credential, and it's hanging on the wall right next to me right now. As a matter of fact, the credential, I don't think they even have it anymore. In the next year or two, they're going to stop supporting it. But I keep it, because it was my very first one, and you never forget your first.

Jill James:

That's right. That's something to be proud of. That is cool. Yeah. You got the job as safety officer, were you able to do some things with it in the fire service, or did you make a shift in-

Dr. David Daniels:

Yes. The safety officer or safety credential, it helped me be a better fire rescue person, I believe. It also got me in a little bit of trouble, because not everybody agreed with me. So, I got my first fire chief job. That's how I ended up here in the Atlanta area. One of the reasons that I left Seattle and came to the Atlanta area to take the chief's job was the trauma around the people I'd seen getting killed in Seattle, to be quite honest. I didn't realize that until after I got here that I had to process some of my own trauma. So, some of the people that worked with me at the time, I think they probably thought I was insane, because I was so hyper-focused on safety. But it was, again, we tend to see the world through our own eyes.

Jill James:

That's right. Through our own lived experience.

Dr. David Daniels:

Through our own lived experience.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Dr. David Daniels:

And I was probably overly cautious in some areas, but I didn't want to have to be responsible for one of the 450 people that I was responsible for, for one of them getting killed. That was a bit much for me.

Jill James:

Yeah. I feel that. Based on my own experience, too, with witnessing workplace death, your lens changes and you're like, "Ooh," when you see anything closer, near whatever that experience was, you're like, "Uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh."

Dr. David Daniels:

Yes.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Dr. David Daniels:

Yes, yes. Again, that focus on safety that I ended up becoming the chair of the International Association of Fire Chiefs Safety Committee.

Jill James:

[inaudible 00:11:31].

Dr. David Daniels:

Of all things.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Dr. David Daniels:

I also ended up being on the board of directors at the IAFC in this safety role. Again, anyone who hung out with me long enough knew safety was my thing. And the buildings on fire and the confined space rescue, all that stuff, I mean, while, on the one hand, it's a rush. I got to tell you, there's nothing like it. But there's also this part of me that says that the vast majority of these occurrences, these incidents, they don't really have to happen that way. Every time they do, somebody is paying with their bodies, some cases with their lives, with their hard-earned money, and they can be prevented. All of them can. I haven't seen one yet that couldn't have been prevented. But-

Jill James:

Me either.

Dr. David Daniels:

Yeah, folks, they didn't know what they didn't know and it happened.

Jill James:

You have a PhD, I'm guessing you did a lot more studying in safety. You want to bring us up to speed on how did that happen? And I want to hear about your passions today.

Dr. David Daniels:

So, my PhD is actually in occupational health and safety of all things.

Jill James:

Where did you find a university for that? Because listeners might want to know that, because we all know we just can't pick up health and safety degrees at any old university.

Dr. David Daniels:

That's right. Capitol Technology University, just outside of DC.

Jill James:

Wonderful.

Dr. David Daniels:

Now, I do have to be honest, it was the second program that was in, I was in one earlier, early on, and I was going to do organizational leadership or something. But one thing led to another, I got to the point of being ABD, or all but dissertation, and just kind of wasn't interested. Some of it had to do with the institution at the time. I won't call their name, but they didn't treat me the way I wanted to be treated. So I said, "I don't really need to do this anyway." So, I stopped. Fortunately, I ran into the folks at Cap Tech U. The program is run, the dean in charge of doctoral programs actually lives in Scotland, I believe. The thing he told me is he said, "We don't do academic hazing here." And I was all over that. Because I don't believe in hazing. I was hazed and-

Jill James:

In the fire service? [inaudible 00:14:05].

Dr. David Daniels:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Everybody was.

Jill James:

Yeah. Okay.

Dr. David Daniels:

I didn't like it. So, I don't believe that we have to haze people to get them to excel. Anyway, that's what really helped me. And shout out to my advisor, Dr. Linda Martin, who had it not been for her actually not hazing me, I wouldn't have finished. Because I'm not a kid. I'm not 23 years old. I know my profession already. My research was focused on the lived experience of Black workers' exposure to psychosocial safety hazards in the American workplace. It opened my eyes in a lot of areas. Two of them, particularly, I didn't find a lot of research being done on Black workers in general from a safety perspective. Some of that has to do with our long history of not seeing people who look like me as human anyway. But the other has to do with the lack of focus around psychosocial hazard mitigation.

Jill James:

Yeah. Talk about that. I mean, if this term sounds new to people who are listening, how do you define it?

Dr. David Daniels:

Well, I define it, in my definition, so in my research, I found 10 different definitions from eight countries, and I found over 80 examples of a psychosocial hazard.

Jill James:

Oh, wow.

Dr. David Daniels:

What I tried to do is synthesize that data, that information into a more concise definition, at least in my scholarly opinion. My definition is a psychosocial hazard is a psychosocial factor that is perceived or experienced by the person exposed as a threat to them, that, in turn, affects their behavior. Psycho, how you think, social, how you interact. That is, in my view, the most significant hazard that people are exposed to in the workplace, bar none.

Jill James:

I wouldn't disagree with you for one second. Yeah. Do you have a couple of examples, so people can imagine that in their minds?

Dr. David Daniels:

Again, these, I'm going to give you a couple that are actually listed. There is a international standard, the International Organization for Standardization has created a standard ISO 45003. It is descriptive, not prescriptive, and it's in support of ISO 45001, the safety management system standard. But in 45003, one of the hazards in this long list is role ambiguity. How is that? I'm hired, I get a new position, whether I'd be hired or promoted into a new position, and people don't tell me really what my job really is. Either I don't have a job description. So, one of my last W-2 employers didn't have a job description for me, and my master's degree is in HR. So, I know how to write them. I know how they should be put together. Every job that I've had working for other people for the last, oh, I don't know how many years, I've had to write my own job description, because the people who were supposed to write them either didn't write them or didn't update them. So, I was being held... Some of this is personal on my part, you're holding me accountable for things, and I don't know that I'm wrong until you tell me. I don't know that I've erred in some way until you say, "Well, you did that wrong." Well, how was I supposed to know that? The job description, I know I didn't get hired to be a mind reader. That creates a tremendous amount of stress for people who are... This goes into even being a safety professional.

Jill James:

That's right.

Dr. David Daniels:

I know you hired me. You said I was a safety manager, safety director, vice president of safety, whatever it is, until I actually start acting like it and start identifying these areas where we need improvement, then all of a sudden, not so much.

Jill James:

Yeah. Right. Yeah. "But wait a minute, wait a minute, don't go that far. We didn't mean that."

Dr. David Daniels:

"We didn't mean that. We said that, yes, safety is our number one priority," but in an organization I was with it recently, until workers started showing up with holes in their shoes, their safety shoes had holes in them, and then when I did my job to make sure that they got proper shoes, it's like, "Well, what are you doing?" "What do you mean what am I doing? That's my job."

Jill James:

Mm-hmm. Been there, done that exactly with the shoes. Yeah.

Dr. David Daniels:

Come on, now. "They only get a certain number." "No, they get as many as they need to ensure that they don't get a foot injury, because that's actually going to cost you more." Again, the role is ambiguous to the extent that people say one thing, but then they act in a different way. That creates stress for people who care, creates stress. Ultimately, the hazard calls psychosocial has risk associated with it. Depending on how vulnerable you are to that risk, that risk often manifests in the form of stress, and stress can kill you.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Dr. David Daniels:

It can kill you.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Dr. David Daniels:

Again, in the United States, because we are behind the other 30 countries in the world who have actually identified this as a real safety hazard thing. It is in their legislation. As a matter of fact, Canada has a really strong standard that's been in place for 10 years. Australia has legislation actually that just went into effect last fall, if I'm not mistaken, have some really strict requirements that you can end up being fined or, in some cases, if connected to some other aspects of that legislation, or even arrested. Again, there are other countries around the world who take this seriously, that psychosocial hazards are just as important as biological, chemical, ergonomic, physical, and other safety hazards.

Jill James:

Couldn't agree more. We did have a podcast guest a while back, Dr. Marnie Dobson, who did an episode with us on workplace stress being an epidemic in the United States.

Dr. David Daniels:

Yes. Yes.

Jill James:

Yeah. And so interesting to hear that other countries legislated around it.

Dr. David Daniels:

Well, and shameless plug here, I host a podcast myself called Psych Health and Safety USA.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Dr. David Daniels:

The podcast is sponsored by a company from Australia. It's one of five globally. They have one in Australia, one in Singapore, one in Canada, one in the UK, one here. Just recently started one in Australia focused on schools. But the one here in the US is very different, because I have to introduce people to the concept. The other thing that I'll mention is psychosocial hazards are connected to, but not the same as psychological safety. Because that's the, Amy Edmondson has done a great job of, one of these days, I'd love to meet Dr. Edmondson, and if I got her permission to hug her, because she has helped people understand how important psychological safety is. But that's now a cottage industry to itself.

Jill James:

It is. Yeah. Talk about the difference.

Dr. David Daniels:

The difference is psychological safety is not an occupational safety and health concept. It is a management and leadership concept. Again, it is important to be able to bring your whole self without fear of retribution or people giggling and laughing when you bring your whole self to work, that's important. But if you do not monitor, so identify, assess and mitigate the psychosocial hazards that you're exposing people to, you will not get or keep psychological safety. Again, they're connected, but most people who talk about it are not safety people. They are leadership and management people, or there's a lot of conversation from the mental health community. Again, I don't say that because anybody owns it. Nobody really owns safety to be quite honest. But we come at it from a different perspective. When I talk about psychosocial hazards, I talk about them similar to the other hazards. But here's what I'm finding is particularly in what people perceive to be low-hazard occupations, they're not doing construction, they're not doing mining and oil extraction. They don't think they have major hazards. But what they do have is this epidemic of psychosocial hazard exposure. That's also connected to your lack of being able to recruit people that you say you want, to retain people you say you want to keep, or to keep people safe you say you want to keep safe. You'll never be able to do that if you continue to expose me to this hazard over and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. And when I bring it up, you minimize my feeling about this to say, "Oh, you're just being soft," or, "You don't understand." No, everyone understands how they feel.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm. How do we go about, how do employers go about creating an environment, a work environment, that's free from psychosocial hazards? How do they create them?

Dr. David Daniels:

You do it the same way you keep your organization or occupation free from other hazards. What is the hazard? How vulnerable are we to it? And what are we going to do about it? It's really pretty simple. But the other thing that I will say is safety, as an occupation, at least in my view, is a product of industrialization. Many of the hazards that we've talked about for the last 100-plus years have been the product of industrialization of machines. We have done a pretty decent job of mitigating physical hazards. People don't, as a matter of fact, go back to the fire service here for a second, people don't generally die in fires at work, they die in fires at home. Because we've made the built environment or the workplace really, really safe from fires. We have lots of fire sprinklers and extinguishers and smoke detectors and escape plans and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All of this stuff. Some of it's actually important, some of it's redundant, but I won't get into that. But we've been hyper-focused on that issue and have forgotten about how people are feeling. Again, the way we, again, identify what... I created an instrument and I'm happy to share it when people bring me into work with them, I created an instrument in my research called a psychosocial hazard inventory. It very simply ask people, "Have you been exposed to this?" That's it.

Jill James:

Can you-

Dr. David Daniels:

Go ahead.

Jill James:

Can you give an example of, have you been exposed to, can you fill in the blank for just one example?

Dr. David Daniels:

Again, let's go back. Have you been exposed to role ambiguity? Have you been exposed to cases where your skills were underutilized? Have you been exposed to situations where you had time pressure? See what I mean?

Jill James:

Yep, I do. I do. I got it.

Dr. David Daniels:

Yeah. Again, much of the research from a safety perspective that I came across is quantitative in nature. Because, as a society, particularly here in the United States, we bought in on Robert Taylor's idea about scientific management. Everything's got to have a number. All y'all who went to business school, that's what you saw when you were in business school, numbers and graphs and charts. And there is this leaning towards quantitative measures of everything. I believe we are lacking qualitative measures of how effective those things are though. Because psychosocial hazards are about how people feel about things, not the 10% increase or decrease in some number. So, a gentleman by the name of Dr. Myron Golden, as a matter of fact, said that, "People do things for one reason and one reason only, because they feel like it." It's not complicated, because they feel... People sign up to work in your company because they felt like it, there was something about the advertisement that made them feel like putting in the application. People took the promotion, people drove a certain way because of how they feel. But then when we analyze the failures in the system that result in property damage, exposure to carcinogens, to safety-related-things-at-work fatalities, we tend to look at the quantitative measures and not the psychosocial, not the qualitative reasons for why did people do that? What was going on in their head when they, and then fill in the blank.

Jill James:

Yeah. The first time I was introduced to that concept was from an industrial psychologist back with the tail end of my career with OSHA. We were talking about, I think we were focused on investigating accidents, things that happened. He gave all of these questions that had to do with things that you never would record. Like what happened to the employee last night? What was going on in their home life? When they arrived at work today, how did they feel? And it was all of these things that were multifactorial that led up to the event. It was the first time in my career that, "Oh, yes. Yes."

Dr. David Daniels:

Yes, because, again, back to Dr. Edmondson's concept of psychological safety, bringing your whole self, he's also bringing things that the employer may not want at work, but that's the gig, folks.

Jill James:

Yep. Yep. I mean, that's it. That's the [inaudible 00:29:22].

Dr. David Daniels:

You can't separate the person from their experiences. Yeah, some of them are going through divorces. Some of them do have sick parents. They do have a bill that didn't get paid. And sometimes the bill didn't get paid, because you aren't paying them a livable wage. That's a whole nother conversation.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Dr. David Daniels:

There are things that are going on in people's lives, and somehow you have people who believe, "Oh, they just need to leave that at home and come to work and do their part." The reality is they can't.

Jill James:

They can't. Yeah.

Dr. David Daniels:

They can't. They can't. And if, if you are really interested in safety and really interested in retaining good people who actually want to do great work, you need to be concerned. If you look at a system and the system is not producing what you want it to produce, W. Edwards Deming would tell you that 95% of the issue is with the system, it's not with the people. So, why is it that every time someone gets injured, we blame the person? Oh, they should've, and da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da.

Jill James:

Always, always, always is the easiest, laziest thing to do.

Dr. David Daniels:

But guess what? Again, this is what I found in some of my fire service experiences. We had a situation in Seattle in January 5th, 1995, four firefighters were killed in a frozen food warehouse when the floor collapsed, the concrete floor collapsed. In Pittston, Pennsylvania, less than two years prior to that, the same thing happened. So, it's about the systems that people are using, not the people that are in those systems. That's where our focus should be. This is where this other term, psychological health and safety, comes in, because that's about the systems that are in place to address the existence of psychosocial hazards and create an environment where you can actually get psychological safety.

Jill James:

Yeah. Dr. Daniels, you've mentioned, as a society, we're not into how people feel. As we're trying to... People are listening and thinking, "Dr. Daniels is on something here. I wonder how I can start bringing this into my workplace." And you've given some ideas today. If one of those starting points is trying to pay attention to how people feel, and maybe that's not a starting point, you can correct me. How [inaudible 00:31:58]-

Dr. David Daniels:

I have a starting place for you.

Jill James:

Okay.

Dr. David Daniels:

The first person is looking in the mirror and how do you feel? That's the issue. Because safety is not for other people. My job as a safety professional is not to make anybody else safe. My job is to be safe myself and assist people with information that will help them decide whether or not they want to get in this boat or not. That's something that emotionally I've had to, over the last two, three years, as a matter of fact, have had to get a perspective on, your problem can't be more important to me than it is to you, because that creates stress for me. Again, if you do not want to wear a seatbelt, that is your prerogative. Now, the consequence to that at this particular organization may be that you don't get the ride in our vehicles. But we're not angry with you. This is not... I don't believe that you discipline adults. I don't believe in discipline, period, to be quite honest, particularly corporal. I don't believe in that. I believe that we should find ways to correct the behavior of folks when it's not consistent with whatever environment that we're in. But this idea about, "We're just going to make them," you can't make people do things if they don't want to.

Jill James:

Yeah. Because when you're not looking, they're going to do it.

Dr. David Daniels:

They're going to do it anyway.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Dr. David Daniels:

Again, I have to look in the mirror and go, "How important is this to me?" And I want to model the behavior. And if in my circle of influence, there are other people who I'm now responsible for, my number one job is to create a safe environment. So, safe environment so they can get things done. As a leader, and again, leader, as I make the distinction between leaders and managers, a people leader, your number one responsibility is to create a safe environment for those who say they want to follow you, period. There's nothing else more important. Nothing. Because as you create a safe environment, they will get the work done. Your job's not to do the work. It's not even to get work done. It's to cause work to get done.

Jill James:

When we spoke previously, Dr. Daniels, you mentioned a book called The Master Communicator's Handbook. Is that something you want to talk about and how it intersects with our conversation today?

Dr. David Daniels:

Yeah, the book, and again, I picked the book up at a meeting of the World Future Society of all places, and they're talking about how futurist, and I consider myself to be one of those as well. We get these lofty ideas about the future and what's great and all these things that are going to happen. But we sometimes forget about what people are actually hearing or what they want to hear. What the book talks about is the importance of making sure you're focusing on the person who's receiving this information, what they're hearing, and not always so much on what it is I want to say. Another book called The Speed of Trust, Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits guy, his son wrote The Speed of Trust. And he talks about it in that book, the fact that we evaluate ourselves based on our intent, we evaluate other people based on their actions and what they do, because we don't really know what their intent was. Now, I've added this part. But then what we do is we assign intent to other people based on what we would do.

Jill James:

That's so true, based on the story that we are making up in our heads about someone else.

Dr. David Daniels:

That's exactly right. But what we often don't do is check the story, because just because I told myself in my head this is what's motivated, "So, that person didn't do this because they just weren't following the rules or they were lazy or da, da, da, da, da, da, da." All this judgemental language, particularly from a safety perspective about, "They didn't care, those workers." I've had to speak to myself about not getting... Because I would get angry about that, to be quite honest. I don't take kindly to people being mistreated, being abused, and you can't do it to me.

Jill James:

Yeah. I mean, that's our role. I mean, at the heart of our occupation, I think of us as being worker justice. The things that get my ire are when people have been mistreated as human beings.

Dr. David Daniels:

Well, yes. Again, unfortunately, this country has a sorted history of exploitation of human beings. As much as we want to say it's over, it's not.

Jill James:

That's right.

Dr. David Daniels:

We still have... It is impossible to have a environment of safety when there's exploitation going on. That's just not possible. And you may say, "Oh, well, we didn't have any injuries." "Okay, yeah, you didn't have any you can see." But emotionally, physically, and often the reason why you don't see it is that nobody will tell you, because they know that if they do tell you, that there will be repercussions for them. So, it's not possible to have safety and exploitation, they don't coexist, they don't, they don't. But on the other hand, if you have an environment where the purpose of us being here as human beings is to do something great, and to treat each other with dignity and... I know that sounds utopian to some people, but I believe that those are the organizations, particularly into the next generation. They're the ones who are going to make the money. They're the ones who are going to get the best workers. They're going to get the best partners, the best business partners, people who are doing this. This gets into the foundation behind Star Trek. How did I go there?

Jill James:

How did you go there? Yes, my ears are [inaudible 00:38:21].

Dr. David Daniels:

So, when Gene Roddenberry and the folks, when they wrote Star Trek, in the Star Trek universe, people don't get paid money because money's been eliminated, because you've got a replicator to meet everybody's basic needs. So, you don't need... So, people are working because they want to contribute to society. I may not see that in my lifetime, but that's what we should be working towards, as we automate, it ought to make things easier and safer for us. Not that you, "Do I need a job? Well, I need a job to get my basic needs met." But if our basic needs were already met, would people work? I think people would, because we want to contribute. We want to work together. We want to do things that are important. Yeah, we can send a machine to take the risk. Again, now, this doesn't get into the whole conversation about sentient AI and all that type of stuff. That's a little bit outside the conversation. But, I mean, a machine doesn't have feelings. Human beings do. So, when we put the machine to lift the thing that the human can't, it should make it easier on the human, not more difficult. Again, ultimately, we should be striving for environments that are about achieving great things, whatever those great things are. Money should be secondary to that. I know that's difficult for capitalists. I get it. I understand. But, frankly, I don't do this stuff for money, to be quite honest. I really don't. I don't mind making money. I really don't. But this is about, for me, it's about a calling. As the Good Book says, "Some are called and few are chosen." And I think that this is one of the reasons that I was placed on Earth is to do this. So, it's difficult to buy me. Difficult to buy me.

Jill James:

When we're fortunate enough, the older we get, the easier that is to see for some of us. Right?

Dr. David Daniels:

That's correct. That's correct.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Dr. David Daniels:

But I'll tell you, and I met some young people and had them on the podcast talking about what millennials and Gen Zers, what they think about safety.

Jill James:

I was just going to ask about that, because the things that you're talking about, I feel like the rising Gen Zers, who are entering the workforce now are aware of the things that you're talking about today in a way, and I have a child who's a Gen Zer, and I just see an awareness that doesn't exist in the other generations.

Dr. David Daniels:

Well, guess what? It's our fault. Here's why I say that. These kids always wore seat belts. These kids had padding at their elementary schools when they fell off the jungle gym. They wore a bicycle helmet. We told them about stranger danger. We have raised them in this safety-focused environment. Then we wonder, they are more in tune with their emotions than a lot of their parents are. That's not a weakness. It's a strength.

Jill James:

It is.

Dr. David Daniels:

As they are coming into the workforce, they're going like, "Well, hold up, hold up. You all been telling us, you've been telling us to go into this industry, and it ought to be a career for us. But then we see what people did to you. We see you lost your job, and your pension got invested by a bunch of unscrupulous people, and we lost our house. And they've had all that other stuff going on with them." So, they care more about the one planet that we're on right now that we can actually get to and live in. So, the reality is, they're just smarter than us. And they're not going to put up with some of the nonsense that some of us have put up with over the course of our lifetime. This goes back to... Now, do you want them to work with you at your org? Because they aren't going to work for you. They aren't.

Jill James:

They're going-

Dr. David Daniels:

They're going to work with you, but they're not going to work for you.

Jill James:

That's right. That's right.

Dr. David Daniels:

So, if those that are wise, there's this pyramid that says that data sometimes becomes information, sometimes becomes knowledge, and ultimately becomes wisdom. The wise out there are figuring out, "If I really want to be ahead, I want to create an environment where these kids," some of them are kids, "when they come here, they're going to feel good about being here. They're going to know that I care about them as a human being. That I'm not here to exploit them. That if they need time off, I'm going to give it to them." Matter of fact, there are some companies, I think one of the big tech companies has talked about no time off requirements specifically, no. Whatever time you need off, take it.

Jill James:

Yeah. Our company, HSI, has that.

Dr. David Daniels:

Okay. This is becoming more the trend. This is not going to be the exception. This is going to be the rule. The question is, do you want to be in on it or not? Or do you want to continue to do it the same old way, "I'm the boss and people will do what I tell them." Well, you're going to eventually be in a room talking to yourself.

Jill James:

Yeah. The Gen Zers and probably the younger Millennials are more into talking about their feelings and their mental health in a way that our older generations, you and I included, never did or felt safe to. They're modeling and leading for us now in a way that's just beautiful.

Dr. David Daniels:

I am so glad to see it, because I've always talked about it. That's one of the things that got me into trouble. "We're not going to get..." But fortunately, I was raised to be my own person and think my own way. It was by my mom and my aunt. I'd share a part of my story, I've never met my dad, ever. I had no male role models at all. I had to learn some of this stuff on my own. But I learned from the two of them, you got to be your own person. And we can't, my mom never, she never said, "I'm trying to be your mom and your dad." She said, "I'm your mom. I don't know about some of that stuff about being a man. I don't really know. So, you're probably going to have to figure it out." So I did. But I do believe that what we traditionally allocate to women, compassion and caring, and I think some of that rubbed off, because I'm that dude. I'm that dude who cries. I'm that dude who... Again, some might say that it's soft or whatever, I wear pink, all that kind of stuff, because that's how I was raised. But as I have more birthdays, I value that perspective, because it's centered on how I feel and how other people feel, and that is important.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm. It is. She did a good job. She did a good job. I want to talk, right before we hit the record button, you were starting to share a little bit about something that you did today, the day of this recording, that's pretty exciting. Do you want to talk about it?

Dr. David Daniels:

So, I had the opportunity about two years ago, I think we were, oh, wow, we were right in the throes of the pandemic. And I jumped on a webinar, it was a webinar about addressing racism in your organization. It was this big corporation. I can't recall who they were and I wouldn't mention even, and an association called the National Association of Black Compliance and Risk Management Professionals. So, I really enjoyed the webinar, NABCRMP, for short, they facilitated the webinar, and this company was... I'm not sure even what the relationship was at the time. They sent me a follow-up email and asked me, "Well, what'd you think about the webinar?" "It was pretty cool." "Would you use some of the tools and whatnot?" I got like, "I'm not sure." The reason I said that is I looked at the profile of the company and there wasn't a bit of diversity in their group. So, I didn't believe that they were serious about... It's not what you say, it's what you do. What you do speak so loud I can't hear what you're saying. That encouraged me to join NABCRMP, because this is a group of Black professionals from the compliance and risk management space. So, I joined, I joined a couple... I liked what they were doing, and they were still pretty new at the time. I joined up and I says, "Hey, have you all ever had any leading indicator people?" I say, "So, well, I'm an occupational safety." "Oh, we'd love to have you." So, I formed a group, an industry work group, we call the Safety and Security Industry Workgroup. It is the only group of safety professionals that are Black and is run by Black people.

Jill James:

That is fantastic.

Dr. David Daniels:

Right about the same time, there was another group forming in Canada. So, we are the Safety and Security Industry Workgroup of NABCRMP in the US. And in Canada, there's a group called the Canadian Association for Black Health and Safety Professionals. [inaudible 00:47:36] what. And I've found them on LinkedIn to be quite honest. But we're both fairly new, fairly small organizations, but we are the only two Black associations with safety professionals, that we're aware of, on the planet, that we're aware of. Now we'd love to hear the other one, but most of, and this is not to be pejorative when I say it, but most of the safety-related organizations have predominantly European people and mostly men.

Jill James:

That's it.

Dr. David Daniels:

It is what it is. Again, I've said this before, but in my research, I found out that when the OSH Act was passed in 1970, the 535 people who voted on it were 98% male and 98% white. Again, the act has been very effective in reducing duty-related exposure and injuries and fatalities, but not for everybody. Again, that is not a criticism of the act itself or the people who created it, but in observation of the limitations, because the ACT itself still says, "His employer, his work," it says, "If there aren't any women in the workplace."

Jill James:

That's right. The thing that you ride to the top of the green elevator is called the man lift.

Dr. David Daniels:

Exactly. So, when I have these conversations about the connection between safety, diversity, equity, and inclusion, it is not to say that I'm not one of those people who's going to bash, "All those white people are bad people, and white men are bad." I'm not saying that. I'm saying, if everyone who the system is supposed to protect is not involved on the front end, the system can never meet the needs of folks who are not involved in the... I don't gender identify as a woman. I'm an ally. Matter of fact, I want to consider myself an accomplice. So, I'll get in the car with you. I'll put the... But there's some things that I can't speak for the experience of a woman. I have a wife and a mom and daughters and sisters, but there's something I just can't speak to. Women need to be able to have their own voice. Black people, Hispanic people, disabled people, LGBTQ+ people, whoever. We all need to have our own voice on how things affect us and have that be considered. "Well, we can't." Yes, you can listen to everyone and, yes, it can be safe for everyone. It's harder. So, that means that the PPE... Honestly, I believe that all PPE should be custom-built. I do. Honestly.

Jill James:

I mean. We're as unique as our-

Dr. David Daniels:

We're all different.

Jill James:

We're as unique as our fingerprint. And you're so right about the OSH Act. My last guest, Carla Davis-Madgett, was talking about, it's gotten us this far, but it's not going to take us to the next place. We're sort of at this stagnant place in our success right now. In part, it is for exactly what you're talking about. It's not addressing the whole of the workforce.

Dr. David Daniels:

That's correct. Again, I believe that the key to addressing the whole workforce is addressing the identification, assessment, and mitigation of psychosocial hazards, because that's where our problems lie. It's not us looking different, doesn't mean much. We think differently. That's the issue. We think differently.

Jill James:

Yeah. When I think about the complaints that I responded to when I was an investigator with OSHA, and the times that I came across things like the complaint was coworkers shooting one another with nails in the nail gun, coworkers looking over the bathroom stalls at one another. Those are some of the things that you're talking about. Then it's like, I can't apply a law to that. I mean, pretty hard to find a standard in the OSH Act that's going to tell you you can't shoot the nail gun at your colleague.

Dr. David Daniels:

Yes.

Jill James:

I mean, that's tricky. Then what did I lean into? Oh, you lean into the general duty clause.

Dr. David Daniels:

Absolutely.

Jill James:

If there isn't anything else, and you have to look through the 300 logs and see if there's been an injury, so you can substantiate it. And then, oh, I happened to work for a state plan that did have some workplace violence things that I could apply. I mean, gosh. It shouldn't be that hard and they're real things that happened to real people every day.

Dr. David Daniels:

That's right. But, again, if we were in 30 other countries.

Jill James:

Yeah, right. Yeah. Where they figured it out. Yeah.

Dr. David Daniels:

And also, but even here in the US, the proclamation by the Surgeon General about the importance of mental health and the statements by the World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization and the International Organization for Standardization. There's enough standard out there. There's enough good practice out there that says, "Why are we waiting for a law?" People do safety things for one of three reasons. Some people do it because it's the morally right thing to do. Some people do it because they think they're going to save a buck. And some people do it because they have to.

Jill James:

That's right.

Dr. David Daniels:

Why is it that we always cater to that and not try to... There are people out there who want, they just don't know how. And that's something that I try to do in my practice, for those who are interested in my consulting practice, is help you figure out how to do that. It's not really as hard as you thought if you get somebody to tutor you a little bit. [inaudible 00:53:30] get people going and you can figure it out past it. It's not really all that hard. It does require a change of mindset, though.

Jill James:

Circling back to the associations that you're part of now, and I asked you about what happened today. I don't think we got to that.

Dr. David Daniels:

Yes, I did not.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Dr. David Daniels:

Today we had, at least the day of the recording anyway, we had a webinar and the title of the webinar was, Is the Safety Profession for Me? And it was asked from the perspective of, we're Black people, is safety a place for us? And it was kind of a loaded question, because the answer is yes, because the safety profession is for any and everyone who wants to be there. So, the idea was to get people in both US and Canada who just happened to racially identify as Black people, because to realize that yes, there is a place for us. Yes, it is a noble occupation. Yes, as a matter of fact, we were fortunate enough to have as a guest only the second Black woman to serve as a regional administrator at OSHA.

Jill James:

Oh, who is... Okay.

Dr. David Daniels:

Billie Kizer, I'll shout out to... As a matter of fact, I met her about nine years ago when I was working with the city of Atlanta. She was in Region 4 here. And it was just an honor to have her, because she's a trailblazer.

Jill James:

Yeah, she is.

Dr. David Daniels:

She shouldn't be the last one either. In 2023, when we're talking about the first or the second or the only, that says we've got work to do. Again, I'll let OSHA or anybody else know, we've got an association, we know people, call us. We can find people for you.

Jill James:

Yeah. That's great.

Dr. David Daniels:

Yeah.

Jill James:

That's great. That's great. Dr. Daniels, you started mentioning mentors a second ago, find yourself a mentor. Also, I think you have something to say about kind of the way you frame things for yourself and how you move in your career and thinking by asking yourself, your 10-year-from-now self, and your 27-year-old self. Do you want to talk about that? It's something that maybe listeners can perhaps be interested in applying to themselves.

Dr. David Daniels:

Yeah. So, even from a mentorship perspective, it is difficult to be mentored when I haven't met myself. Because I think sometimes people spend a lot of time looking at other people and what have they done? The first person to meet is myself. I do share that I met myself at 27. Matter of fact, I might have been 26, to be quite honest.

Jill James:

Okay.

Dr. David Daniels:

As a matter of fact, there was a particular thing that occurred in my life, so yeah, I'm pretty certain, I was 26 at the time, and I made a decision that a lot of people thought was really terrible to them, but it was what I needed to do at the time. There have been a lot of consequences that have come for that. And I don't apologize for the decision, because it's what I needed to do at the time. So, getting to know what was important to me and not having my mom, my siblings, people around me decide for me. They say that your brain tends to form right around 25 or so, anyway. So, I maybe have my brains just got fully formed. I said, "I need to do this for my own reasons." But after I met me, I also got introduced to somebody else who really helps me out quite a bit. That's my future self. There's, as a matter of fact, credit to a TED Talk I watched once called The Psychology of Your Future Self. If we had a conversation with ourself in the future, what would our future self say about the decisions that we make today? My 10-year-from-now self, we got into a groove that virtually everything I do, I try to consider how would my 10-year-from-now self, what would he think about that? And if he doesn't want to do it, I'm not doing it. Period. Those are the ones that... There are some that's, "I'm not really sure," that's worthy of conversation, but if he says like, "Nope," answer is no, period. End of story, conversation over. Until we do those things, even mentorship can take us in directions that we won't enjoy, because we're-

Jill James:

Because we don't know who [inaudible 00:58:03].

Dr. David Daniels:

Because we don't know ourselves yet. Once I know me, then I can go, "Who's on this similar journey that I'm taking? Who's interested in some of the same kinds of things? Who may be down the road where my 10-year self wants me to get and they're there already?" Unfortunately, I lost one of those mentors here a little less than a year ago. Shout out to then, he was a fire lieutenant, his name was Angelo Duggins, and he took me under his wing when I was in recruit school and mentored me throughout the vast majority of my fire service career. He, again, recently passed away, again, unfortunately, of cancer. I have never met another human being who, in a work setting, that caused me to feel safe and feel like I could be myself and encourage me instead of telling me, "That's a ridiculous idea." He told me, he said, when I said, "Look, I wanted to be a chief," and I was 22, he says, "Well, why not? Let's try it." He knew it was going to take a while. He helped me study and didn't discourage me, but simply, "So, you want to try? Let's try that out." And created this safe space. He was a really, really important person in my life. I think that's what we should be looking for, is people who we can meet along the way. Not that they can point the way, but we can meet along the way. If they haven't really gone that way. It's kind of difficult for you to help me do something you don't know anything about. But people that you can meet along the way are very precious.

Jill James:

They are. I had the great fortune of meeting myself when I was 28. So, similar to you, from a pivotal experience as well.

Dr. David Daniels:

Sure.

Jill James:

I'm thinking about our listeners listening to this and maybe that's resonating with some who are like, "Oh, yes, I remember when I stepped into myself." For anyone else who that feels fuzzy for, maybe think about what stirs in you, what stirs something into you and when that happens, whether it's stirring you into action or stirring you into, "That's not a line I'm willing to cross." Where does that come from? And it's probably when you figure out who you are, would be my guess.

Dr. David Daniels:

Exactly right.

Jill James:

And carry that forward. As you're pointing out with mentors, Dr. Daniels, I believe in looking for what I might call earthly angels along the way. People, if you're looking for them, are in your path.

Dr. David Daniels:

They are. They are.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Dr. David Daniels:

They are. The other thing too is don't depend on any one person to give you everything that you need.

Jill James:

Amen.

Dr. David Daniels:

Because they can't. You know what they say, don't meet your heroes. The challenge is-

Jill James:

That's true.

Dr. David Daniels:

... it's not the hero that's the issue. It's you.

Jill James:

Yeah, that's right.

Dr. David Daniels:

It's your expectation of the hero, because even the heroes are humans. They're not perfect. Neither are you. They don't know everything, neither do you. They can't do everything, neither can you. So, if we adjust our expectations, say, "Look, for this person, this is what I get out of the relationship with this person or this group. If I can't get something that I need, I don't need to discard this relationship. I need to make a new one. I need to make a new," and add to. I had the opportunity to attend a program at Harvard some years ago for senior executives in state, local government. One of the things I walked away from the program with was this concept that relationships are primary and all else's derivative.

Jill James:

Amen. Dr. Daniels, as we're wrapping up our time today. I'm curious about, you are 40 years into your career, you are obviously excited. Where are you taking this next or what's got you fired up these days that you're going to continue?

Dr. David Daniels:

So, first of all, my life plan is to go to 110. I did that specifically in my late 40s, at the time, with where medical research and all. So, I didn't make that up. I mean, I believe that's possible. If it's not, that's okay. Everything, there's some things that I don't do, because I want to make it to 110. What I'm doing right now is finally working full-time for myself instead of part-time for myself. I worked full-time for other people and part-time for myself for years, and in many cases, my frustration was around why is it that they're limiting me? Well, I was limiting myself by doing that. Why is it that they're treating me? Well, I allowed that to happen. So, it is exciting to be on the cusp of this explosion of focus on how people feel in the workplace. I'm convinced of it. I believe it's going to happen. I'm doing everything that I can. In every organization I'm attached to, I'm having this conversation with them about how important it is to address how people are feeling about things. I want to be around to see some of the fruits of my labor. So, that's what keeps me fired up and keeps me going.

Jill James:

That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Keep it up. My gosh, we all have so much to learn in this regard. Thank you so much for your time today, Dr. Daniels.

Dr. David Daniels:

It is my pleasure, Jill, and hopefully we'll have another conversation similar at some point in the future.

Jill James:

I would love that. 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 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. 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. Daniels and I. Special thanks to Emily Gould, our podcast producer. Until next time, thanks for listening.