S12Ep13: 25 Years of SafeStart and What We've Learned

As SafeStart turns 25, we share what we've learned in the last quarter of a century and the solutions we've developed to those challenges.    

Host: Danny Smith
Guest: Matt Hall

Transcript

Danny Smith

Host

00:07

Welcome back to SafeTalk with SafeStart. I'm your host, Danny Smith, and when most people think about SafeStart, they typically think of the personal skills building process that centers around increasing awareness of the four human factors that we call states and those four specific critical errors caused by times when those states are elevated. Now those with a bit more exposure to the concepts may also be familiar with the skills portion of SafeStart that centers around our four critical error reduction techniques. It also helped to interrupt that state to error pattern and for more than two decades this great 4x4x4 technology has helped people around the globe to improve their personal safety. Now I know I'm going to sound a bit like one of those great pitchmen, like the great late Billy Mays, when I say this next line but wait, there's more, and with SafeStart there really is more. 

01:00

Okay, before you shut this down and think of this as okay, this is another infomercial. That's not where we're going with this today. Rather, we want to spend just a few minutes talking about how SafeStart as an organization has really evolved over the past few years, and we've expanded our capabilities to better meet the ever-evolving needs of our clients. In other words, SafeStart the organization has become much more than SafeStart the product, and one of the leaders in our organization that's been helping with this transition is one of SafeStart's Vice Presidents, Matt Hall. We've got him here today with us on the podcast. So first of all, Matt, welcome to the podcast. 

Matt Hall

Guest

01:37

Danny, thanks so much. It is my pleasure to be with you and our SafeTalk listeners today. Thanks really so much for the invite. 

Danny Smith

Host

01:46

Yeah, as we get started, Matt, why don't we start a little bit about? Well, who is this guy? Who is Matt Hall? For our listeners that may not be familiar with you or, for that matter, with your background, and although you've been with us for a number of years now, you haven't always been as involved in the safety realm in your profession and professional career before right no, not at all, actually. 

Matt Hall

Guest

02:09

To be honest, before I came to SafeStart, I was, I was a bit of everything. I was involved in the world of IT media, software, so safety was a huge transition for me, I think. One of the things that I've probably prided myself on in my career, however, is to work with partner, with game-changing companies and, honestly, that's why I'm here today and that's why I'm not going anywhere in terms of working with the SafeStart family one of the other interesting things I think that we found with you and your career is you've said you haven't been a part of the safety world. 

Danny Smith

Host

02:50

If you will, You've been able to kind of look at this, I guess you say from the outside, looking in. Is that fair to say? 

Matt Hall

Guest

02:58

It is. 

02:59

Yeah, I think there's a number of different advantages that my position carries in starting to take on this strategic kind of leadership role within the executive leadership group of the SafeStart organization. I think one of those is look, regardless of the role responsibility you carry with an organization, if you want optimal customer experience, you've got to be an effective listener and and I think the roles that I've taken on in my career, and especially the one that I'm in with SafeStart right now, has, has really forced just that. It's quite unique, in fact, starting in a sales executive leadership role, I have experienced so many conversations with our clients, with our prospects, and that role is to listen. It's to listen to what's keeping them up at night. It's to listen to the problems, the challenges they experience every single day. You have to first be a really good listener and, honestly, over the last five, six years especially, that's exactly what I've been doing. I've been really trying to listen to our clients, our customers, what they're experiencing, what they need, and then really align our business objectives to those. 

Danny Smith

Host

04:29

In one of our earlier conversations and it may have just been something, I don't know a few months back, when we were talking, you made the comment to me you felt like you'd kind of become a safety professionals therapist, just listening to everybody. I think we all need that a bit, don't we? You know, one of the things that's always very interesting to me is there's a lot of commonality in the issues that we face as safety professionals, and that's regardless of the industry that we're working with. I mean, even though you know every company, every organization, every industry deals with different operational processes and hazards. We get that. 

05:04

But yet, you know, we're all dealing with people, and that's where our focus is with SafeStart, for sure, but sometimes it feels like, well, we're the only one that's fighting these battles, and I've kind of felt that way myself before I went into consulting for sure back in the, you know, when I was in the safety manager, safety director role. So why don't we start there and let's talk about some of those common issues that we find with everybody? And one of the easiest ones to start with, I guess, if we're going to picking the low hanging fruit to start with, is what most safety professionals are really judged on. That is injury reduction, be it lowering their TRIR or their DART rates. Is injury reduction be it lowering their TRIR or their DART rates reducing overall severity of incidents that have occurred, or maybe long-range benefits like reducing work comp costs or things of that nature? Injury reduction is certainly on everybody's mind, to start with right. 

Matt Hall

Guest

05:57

Yeah, absolutely. I mean I'm looking at my notes here and if I go back to you know, SafeStart the organization being a game changer. 

06:06

Well, SafeStart the product. The product most people on the podcast listening today will be very familiar with right, the core concepts, the states, the errors. That was a game changing product and it still is. And for organizations that are looking to change the game, SafeStart usually a pretty safe bet in terms of a place to start. I mean, when it comes to injury reduction, you know, injury reduction has traditionally been one of those things, that key driver that sends clients, customers, our way right, and we're really proud of that. I mean, when it comes to the SafeStart process, the injury reductions that we see are 60% or higher in most cases within that first year of implementation. 

06:53

So, yeah, SafeStart the product has been that proven leader, that constant, if you will, in just simply preventing injuries and, I would say, getting people to look at hazards differently. And I think, when it comes to that resolution, right, how do we want to attack things differently? If you're listening right now and you find yourself a little bit a mouse on a wheel, right, you've experienced the same things over and over again. Reframe what you've been looking at and how you've been dealing with it and I think that's one of the most consistent pieces of feedback we've certainly heard about SafeStart and how to attack injury. Reduction is really. You have to look at the hazards differently. 

Danny Smith

Host

07:37

Yeah, one of the other interesting things I think that's an outgrowth of that we talked about how most safety professionals that's what we're judged on you know is injuries or injury-related data, if you will. But I think something that's really important and it's easy to overlook if we're not careful as well, is that you know, SafeStart typically produces some improvements in other areas too, beyond just safety, quality performance and just other operational KPIs. Let's be honest, sometimes within organizations we don't want to think this way, but it's true some other leaders in the organization may not be quite as focused on safety as everybody else. I mean, it's not necessarily what they're judged upon. They've got other operational metrics that they're being held accountable for. But yet if we can improve those other areas while we're improving safety, it's kind of like the old economic thought process where they say a rising tide floats all boats right. 

08:40

So I found that SafeStart really helps a lot within operations as well. So you make an improvement in one area, well, you get the corresponding improvement in other areas. So I think if we can make more operational leaders aware of that while we're getting the injury reductions that we're shooting for, then that can help us as well, particularly when it comes to that. Well, what we hear is the second major area of concern with folks, which is engagement. How do we get more folks involved with safety and how do we get more folks directly supporting our safety efforts? 

09:15

Yeah, I think that's absolutely key, I mean, it goes without saying. But it's very much all connected, right, and it can also feel extremely overwhelming to look at it as one massive undertaking, right. I think in a few minutes here I'd like to briefly discuss kind of our human factors framework approach to give our clients and the industry a process of on how to better understand where to start. Sure, right, but to that piece, engagement, without engagement, I mean, can you really get, the results that you're after, the outcome reliability that you're after in any of those areas, whether it be safety, whether it be injury reduction, whether it be quality, you know, quality, you know. 

Danny Smith

Host

10:10

I don't think so yeah, and you know we've. We focused a lot traditionally with SafeStart, even though it's been implemented for all employees, including, you know, office workers, sales staff, you know service techs, managers, supervisors, all the way down to frontline employees. There's obviously been a lot of emphasis there on frontline employees. But leveraging some of that, I think we've learned as well how important it is, as you said, just to make sure we are engaging everybody up and down the organization, if you will, particularly with managers and frontline supervisors. I can't tell you the number of folks that I've talked to over the past few years that say, yeah, our senior management's bought in to whatever. 

10:55

The safety initiative is, not just SafeStart but safety in general. Our frontline workers seem to be, but boy, our frontline supervisors, especially the new ones, man, they're just really struggling with understanding safety. Sometimes they don't even know how to identify, you know, specific hazards, you know in their work area, and they need help with that. And so, not to sound salesy here, I mean that's part of why we've evolved and developed things such as SafeLead right, just finding ways to engage those folks and letting them have the tools that they need to engage your folks at an individual level as they're going through their day-to-day process. 

Matt Hall

Guest

11:32

Well, I mean, look, Danny, you've mentioned managers, you've mentioned supervisors. For me personally, based on the conversations that I'm having with our customers, with prospects, almost every day, it starts and ends there, right? I mean, when you look at the difference between something like a safety culture that you're looking to drive, which I'm sure, for our listeners today will be saying that's my priority it is impacting that culture. I would like to challenge those listeners to say well, have you first understood what your safety climate looks like? And your safety climate is often driven by your managers and supervisors. Now, the difference between climate and culture. 

12:20

Climate's what's going on today, right? Climate is how does it feel in the shop today? Right Now, there could be things that accelerate that in a positive light. Right, somebody gets a promotion or we're celebrating a retirement. That's going to carry a lot of a different atmosphere in the room. 

12:42

But with all the uncertainty and left turns and surprises 2020 and 2021 have given us all, we also know that climate can change the other direction as well, and our supervisors and our leaders need to be there and be that safety net for our employees in order to make sure that the climate is healthy. And what I would challenge our listeners to today is to really look at your leaders and look at your supervisors and say are they driving the climate that will ultimately drive the culture? And if you come to the determination that there's improvement areas and there's opportunity there, that is exactly why we've created pieces and solutions like our SafeLead process, which is much different than SafeStart, given the fact that SafeLead is solely dedicated to leveling up your supervisors and frontline leaders to help you get the climate that you want to achieve the culture you're after. 

Danny Smith

Host

13:49

Yeah, and I love the comment that one of our one of our clients made back a while back and we actually referenced this as a part of that safely process, you know is you know, well, we just promoted our best welder to be our welding supervisor because we lost our welding supervisor, so we promoted them and now we've lost our best welder but we've gained our we've. We've lost our best welder but now we have gained our worst supervisor because they didn't have the supervisory skills. I got kind of tangled up there in that. But you guys understand what I'm saying, you know, and it's funny because I think that's an issue for a lot of folks as well, for a lot of folks as well. 

14:26

But another thing is and here I go getting on my soapbox again you know, as a society, I think we've been turning out lots and lots and really pretty solid managers for the past few decades, but I think we're really painfully low on leaders, you know, and that's not just an industry, that's in society. And I will get on a soapbox if I get off on that. We'll just leave that alone for right now. But uh, you know, it's. It's so true, we got to help these leaders continue to learn. Help these frontline supervisors continue to grow within their organizations right absolutely. 

Matt Hall

Guest

15:01

I mean one of my favorite quotes I believe it was uh T Phillips. He said the best leaders never stop learning. Yeah Right, and one of the evolutions if I think about, you know, I digest that internally to what we're doing right now to change our organization and impact. You know, everybody that's listening today, that's one of the evolutions of SafeStart as that organization right, regardless of position, we've got something for everyone at your company. And that in and itself is the core to our human factors framework. 

15:44

And I'm telling you, for anybody that's listening, if you haven't checked out our human factors framework, think about it as a diagnostic tool, not a solution. It's just you can go check it out. It's yours, please, please, please. Utilize it in whatever way that suits you best but think of it as a diagnostic tool to help you understand how to incorporate both what you're learning from your individuals at your organization and how to apply that to your organization to improve not only the people skills but also the company as a whole. And I'm sure that we could go off into an hour long conversation about that at all, but hopefully I've piqued some interest enough to say like, look, take an extra 10 minutes today as your own resolution on improving your own skill set.. Spend a few minutes on that human factors framework and it'll be worth your while. 

Danny Smith

Host

16:43

Yeah, for sure. And if you haven't downloaded that previously, you can go out to our website and find that. You can Google it and just type in SafeStart human factors framework and it'll be one of the first things that pops up there and you can download that white paper there. It's a great read. It really helps you to think about things a little bit differently, and there's also, by the way, a great podcast that Tim Page-Bottorff and I did about the human factors framework. If you want to get into a little more discussion about that, you can certainly download that as well. 

17:16

You know, Matt, one of the things I've always found is, you know, we start with the injuries. We looked at engagement. The third thing that we hear so many people talk about really is that cultural aspect. You touched on this just a few minutes ago, talking about some of the differences between climate and culture. You know what's going on today versus what's been going on in the way we do things here, that type thing. 

17:40

But I think sometimes we as safety professionals and I think, by extension, some of the senior management staff that I see in a lot of organizations it's almost as though we need one of those signs, like we see at the mall, where you've got the big red arrow that says you are here. Sometimes we think we're in one place, but we may actually be somewhere else if we don't get the feedback from our employees. So I think that's a crucial thing that we can help with as well, as we've continued to evolve as an organization is, you know, helping people to define where they are and assess where they are and just figure out. Okay, if we want to get to wherever it is, then you got to have a starting point and you got to make sure it's the right starting point, or else you may be prescribing, you know, the wrong approach to solving the problem. You don't want to try to solve the wrong problem, I guess would be the way to put that right. 

Matt Hall

Guest

18:32

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, culture isn't really something you just flip that switch and say, all right, we did it. Right, we're here, we've changed our culture. On to the next. 

Danny Smith

Host

18:42

Right. Yeah, we're done Right. 

Matt Hall

Guest

19:09

But that's not really the case, because I mean what we're talking about at the core of it all are people, and people change and processes change and things change and products change, which requires the organizations to change, sometimes on the daily, and that's exactly why I think the phrase safety journey is so often used. It really is a journey. However, it is a daily journey because of that climate and how the climate changes things on a dime right. So, as an organization, this is probably one of the pieces I'm most proud of with working with the SafeStart team is how well positioned we are now to help our clients in understanding where they're at. You know, at the beginning of this conversation, Danny, it was about listening right. It was about being able to be an effective listener in order to recommend an appropriate solution. 

19:59

And in those listening skills, one of the most consistent pieces of feedback I've heard and I hope our listeners take some comfort from this and that they're not alone we often hear I don't know sure when it comes to where you're at. It's I'm not sure it's. My spidey senses are tingling that we're here, but that might be different if I get the rest of my leadership team into a room and everybody states their opinion, and I think that one of the strongest solutions that we carry right now are through our advisory service offerings and, at the most simplistic sense, our advisory services will be able to assess where you're at today, to give you that starting point, because without that starting point, you don't really know where to go right. So we've brought in some of the world's best talent period in being able to provide those assessment and diagnostics to give our clients, that starting point on where you are at in that journey in order to know what you need to take on. 

Danny Smith

Host

21:22

Sure, yeah, and I love that process. I mean, sometimes it's as we've said, sometimes it's where we think the problem is here or we think, culturally we're here. But sometimes our employees see things a little differently and, as you said, the advisory services group can really help with that. It goes beyond just doing, you know, assessment diagnostics. There's a lot more involved with the advisory services group than just that, but for a lot of organizations that's kind of where they start right. 

21:52

Absolutely about three specific things here, just to recap you know that people are struggling with on a regular basis, injury reduction, protecting folks and giving them the skills they need to help keep themselves safe, getting that top to bottom and bottom to top. Engagement through improving communication, providing a common language. And then we talked a lot about culture here. Be it, you know, through helping supervisors build a more trusting relationship with their employees, giving the company a better view of their situation through employee surveying or other advisory services, or just finding the prescriptive approach to implementing a specific solution to meet the problem right. So we've talked about a lot of different things there and I hope our listeners can see that, as we said, you know, we're more now than just SafeStart the process. We're now, you know, a full-service type organization, if you will right. 

Matt Hall

Guest

22:53

Yeah, it's absolutely critical, you know if you could only take away. 

22:58

You know, 10 to 30 seconds of this podcast. Today. You're on your way to a meeting. Whatever the case may be, please take away this. SafeStart focuses in three key areas injuries, engagement and culture and we've got something for everyone, whether it be the worker, your onsite or distributed workforce. We've got something for your leadership tier, whether it be your supervisors or frontline managers, or whether or not you need something for your senior leadership to ensure that there's alignment in order to understand where you need to put your strategic focus. We're going to tackle those areas injuries, engagement and culture in a number of different ways, whether it be through our SafeStart process, which many of you are familiar with, whether it's through our SafeLead process, which is just growing and growing astronomically, or whether it be through our advisory services, capabilities and offerings to really roll up our sleeves, partner with you and help you understand where you are today in order to where you need to be tomorrow. We've got you and that is who we are as an organization, stating this on January 2022, that is SafeStart. 

Danny Smith

Host

24:22

That's a lot different than what we. If you would ask us what is SafeStart back on January 5th of you know 2015. Well, the answer may have been a bit different, right, and that's that is because we have evolved, and that's not discounting the history and the experience that we've had. In fact, it's building upon it. And that's really what we're trying to do the combined knowledge of really just hundreds and hundreds of years of operational and safety experience of our consulting staff and our other team members, just continuing to expand now into these other areas. It's so neat to see this because it all just dovetails so greatly together. Folks, if you'd like to talk more with Matt or perhaps one of our other account executives about this, you can email Matt. Probably the easiest way to get him is through email and his email is matthewhh that's matthewh, as in hall at safestartcom. So, Matt, really, really great talking with you today. Uh, any closing thoughts on this? 

Matt Hall

Guest

25:25

 If you get any of those surprises that you feel you need help with, we're here for you. So please reach out to me or anyone. If you would like a few extra minutes to just better understand who SafeStart is as an organization, please don't hesitate and we're going to make sure that you're well looked after. But thanks so much, Danny, for having me, thanks so much SafeTalk listeners for hearing it today. 

Danny Smith

Host

26:13

But I would like to say hey, we're continuing to evolve and maybe we sit down again early next year and we have another conversation about the continued evolution of SafeStart as a company and as an organization, because I'm sure we're continuing to add more and more things as we continue to grow. So it's an exciting time for us all. So thanks for everybody for listening today and, just as a reminder, be sure to share this with others in your organization as well as just making them aware of the SafeTalk podcast in general, and make sure to let them know that it's out there and it's a resource for them. So, for everybody here at SafeTalk with SafeStart, I'm Danny Smith. Thanks so much for listening and have a great day, thank you.