Lean, Safe, and Effective: Enhancing EHS with Proven Tools & Emerging Trends

Episode Transcript:-

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Hilary Framke:  Welcome back listeners. I’m your host to the Elevate EHS podcast, Hilary Framke. I have a new guest with me today. I’ve got Scott Davis. Hi, Scott. 

Scott Davis: Hello, Hilary. How are you? 

Hilary Framke: I’m doing fantastic. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today and chatting EHS.

Scott Davis: Yeah, it’s a big one, isn’t it? 

Hilary Framke: It is. We could talk about so many things, but let’s start with what industries have you experienced in your career so far, and how have you seen the role of practitioners change over the years?

Scott Davis: Wow, that’s a loaded question when you’re talking to the elderly. So electronics seems like probably the big portion of my career, close to 20 years in the electronics industry. I did some work for Lazy Boy, which is a furniture company. I like to say furniture, but it doesn’t sound much like anything. Did some work there, did some work with the oil and gas folks.

A lot of that was in the consultation world. They needed some help. Did the same thing with the concrete precast world. That’s building concrete bridges and under passes and all those water works and storm water stuff. Spent some time with those guys. Then went into medical manufacturing. And no, it doesn’t make much sense to go from a 200 ton concrete bridge to a three ounce catheter or needles and things in the medical industry. It’s a big jump, but we’ve tried to make it bigger. I left the medical industry and went into aerospace. So that was building wing skins for jets and subsonic helicopters and some crazy stuff with those guys. And then the automotive stuff. So I’ve always been touching back to automotive. They seem to have their fingers in both the electronics world. They’re always close to an aerospace manufacturer of some sort, but all of these facilities are all manufacturing. I did work for the software company for some time. Building a software platform for a water distribution system for an Indian reservation North up in Idaho. That was an interesting thing. So I’ve spent a little bit of time touching all sorts of strange things. As far as the role of the EHS practitioner, I think it’s probably one of the few hot jobs right now.

It seems like all manufacturing are looking for some type of EHS practitioner at some level. They’re all learning what we all knew that was happening 15, 20 years ago. How important it is to keep people safe and obviously the environment. It takes manufacturing a little while. The larger companies chased it faster.

The bigger the company, the deeper the pockets and the more roles they have within the EHS world. But it is huge right now. And obviously all the bells and whistles that go along with EHS. 

Hilary Framke: I just feel I’m so blown away by how many different sectors of industry you’ve been in. Did you find Scott, that there were similarities in the program implementation and the controls, or was there a lot of variation? 

Scott Davis: All of them had one thing in common that stands the test of time, is trying to keep people safe and they all had their ways, or I would call their culture in which they wanted to do that.

They all are a little bit rough on environmental. They don’t realize how much impact the environmental has with their manufacturing businesses, but what they all had in common unequivocally is keeping people safe because people on the floor make you money. And keeping them safe and healthy, it just pays for itself.

It’s a dividend every time someone comes to work feeling good and feeling healthy. So that’s what they all had in common. But they all are very much different culturally. All the way to presidents that are just casual about it to presidents that the first conversation they have at any staff meeting or not is they talk about safety.

So those are the fun companies because they believe in your program. And I’ve been with 2 or 3 really good ones. That’s all they live and breathe, EHS and safety is the number one subject. So they’re fun to work with because they believe in your program.

Hilary Framke: Yeah, that so accelerates your ability to improve things, right? 

Scott Davis: Completely accelerates it. Absolutely. Every time. 

Hilary Framke: It never ceases to amaze me. Now that I’m on the software side of things, I meet so many prospective clients, and EHS practitioners. And you get to hear about their scope and who they have for resources. Was on a call today with a prospective client.

I won’t say who, but 85,000 employees and one EHS person. It wasn’t a manufacturing sector, but still. It never ceases to amaze how under resourced EHS is. I just looked at him and said, how do you do it? How do you keep up with 280 locations and 85,000 employees?

He goes, I just don’t. I can’t. Nobody possibly could. 

Scott Davis: Yeah, the difference  is, it’s the top of the food chain. They don’t believe in it. So they’re not believing in him. At the end of the day, that’s what they’re saying. It’s just not that important or we don’t feel like it is that important.

It doesn’t influence us. So when a company of that size of that stature says this is all I got, it’s sure to not a priority. Okay. I can guarantee you that 

Hilary Framke: So let’s shift gears a little bit and double click into EHS programs. In our prep call, we discussed the idea of integrating practices, and especially around tools that you could use in EHS that would drive efficiency. So I’m thinking specifically about some Lean Methodology tools you had talked about. So why don’t you tell our listeners a little bit more about that and how they can take some other function’s tools and apply them in EHS.

Scott Davis: The companies that are looking for continuous improvement have always looked at lean. They’ve looked at Six Sigma. They’ve looked at any way to make their processes better, faster, cheaper. But what’s fun about getting into these programs, especially the cultures that are listening. And I just had an opportunity because I was implementing their new ISO system/Lean system. And ISO being the International Standard like ISO 9000, QS 9000, all the aerospace companies are chasing it.

But as a believer in lean and Six Sigma, what I was trying to do, and they were all on top of this because it just made the paperwork even better. What I mean by paperwork is that, why not take our lean that we’re already doing in those stand up meetings that is a lean requirement.

They call it a SQDIP board or they call it a run the business board. And one of the first sections is safety. Then you talk about quality. Then you talk about delivery. And all of these are staples in the lean type manufacturing. Shingo knew it was the right way to do business. He believed in it.

He’s the guy from Toyota. But lean was more than that. It becomes the visual factory showing people what the glove is supposed to look like, the safety glove. Or what kind of glasses they should be wearing. But why not have it on a regular basis? So as we get that increased communication from the floor, have that stand up meeting board.

And on the board, the first thing we talk about is safety. So the way you improve, the environment from the floor is get that information from the folks that are actually doing it. Which is all your team members from the floor. So even moving from the stand up meetings to the run the business board all the way down to what we call the 5S project.

So if you’re familiar with lean, they use the term 5S. But the real companies take it one step further and call it the 6S project. So every Kaizen, every 5S project has a safety environmental element to it. And it’s a wonderful way to again, keep pushing the safety incentives and those environmental improvements right down to the floor.

So lean already opens up the door. All you got to do is take advantage of it. I just think people forget the whole meaning of lean. It has to do with improving manufacturing and the way we do that is to keep our people safe. So that’s how we do it. 

Hilary Framke: Scott, I’d love to pick your brain a little bit. So I’ve seen, safety is covered, right? They’ve got the SQDIP board, right? They’re having these standup meetings and I’ll go sit in on them. But here’s the classic, right? We get started, everyone’s standing there and they go, okay, did we have any incidents last night? No? Okay Quality. And they move right on. So how do you make it more than just a check the box activity? 

Scott Davis: It’ll always start out as a check the box. We’re human. And we’re already a little bit bored, but add another little element to your safety side. There’s four sides to the box that they rotate and make more engagement.

One way of doing it is that we started to talk about HAZ IDs and we’ll talk a little bit more about that down the road. But the beauty is the board is that engagement. So we created an engagement sheet that says, here’s it. Here’s all the team members names. And did they find any HAZ IDs for the month?

So boy, do they want to be right? The way they don’t want to not have that board filled out. And then we put a, big safety S. You can put a S, you can put a cross. So they have to color in the day before, if it was a true safety day that didn’t have any incidents like a first aid or to that level.

They don’t want to be wrong and they want the board to be filled out. Even at the elementary level, when you want to hand your paperwork in to the teacher, you want it filled out correctly. So give them something to fill out and not make it just check the box, but more importantly, engagement from the floor.

So you have to get a little tricky. Sometimes you have to get a little fun with it and they have to fill out that the employee member has to come in and cross that little X off that he or she found, a hazard of some sort or even an opportunity for improvement. But the point of it is, lean wants you to engage the floor. Sometimes you have to be, I don’t know the right word. Isn’t tricky.

Hilary Framke: Yeah, creative.

Scott Davis: It’s just an engagement sheet. So to try to get away from that check the box, giving them something to do. 

Hilary Framke: I think that’s great advice. So finding if all they’re talking about is incidents and you’re not having any, give them some other KPIs. Corrective action closures. Incident investigations reported on time, talking through the last investigation. 

Scott Davis: On time delivery, all that can fall right into the HAZID world. 

Hilary Framke: Exactly. And then I really like your idea, about getting creative. I think we don’t do this enough. And like you said, 

it can sound a little elemental, but there’s something to be said about building up themes too, for the year. And focusing in on specific risk profiles every month. Now, ASSP and NSC comes out with a lot of themes, right?

You can either tack on to that or you could do something more customized. But I think if you’re not getting any data and they’re not having conversations. You need to give them something to talk about, right? So saying, Hey, this month is electrical safety month. Here’s what we’re going to focus on.

Week one is going to be cords. Week two is going to be panels. Week three is going to be whatever, right? And give them actual topics. And you’ll find that all of a sudden, like you said, HAZ IDs pop up.

Scott Davis: So we started what they call a 12 month calendar. And in the 12 month every 30 days is a new subject.

Not only do we train to, through an LMS system, some type of system that holds all of our videos but it’s all the same video, not only the division but the company. So we’re all talking the same thing. We also meet once a month with these high point teams or safety committees and they have that same subject matter.

So the subject stays alive for at least 30 days. It also increases knowledge on the [00:12:00] floor. There’s even take home knowledge, just learning about stuff you have, happening at your own home. Another way of engagement. All of those are great opportunities.

Hilary Framke: What about this? If you could pick one EHS program, that’s what we call a game changer in EHS, what would it be and why? 

Scott Davis: Years ago they brought up the idea this was one of those, probably some consultant came up with the term behavior based safety. They had to give it a acronym that sounded really cool. BBS. But the reality was, is how do I engage the floor and how do I find all the things that they see and how do I get it on a piece of paper or how do I get that knowledge from his or her brain onto some type of board, a piece of paper.

Years ago, we talked about it and it started out to be like a near hit card or a near miss card. A catch card. Hey, I caught something and I write this down. So the idea is that whatever you find, whatever hazards you may see on the floor, guarantee you this is a game changer, and the frequency is what helps change the game.

I’ve gone into companies where they only did this near hit program. All you had to do was do one a year, turn it into once a quarter. Couple companies ago we moved it to once a month. So every single month, every single associate team member had to hand in a HAZID form that really talked about opportunities for improvement and or safety problems.

And we had to open them and close them. And we were trying to help with the volume of them. So we found a an opportunity with a software that you could actually type it in and be a little bit more efficient about getting them there. But more importantly, we got all those HAZ IDs.

 You’re talking about 200 of them in a month. You needed to be able to have a database of some sort to manage them. And then you could do other things. So if they were really important, you could create notification or notifiers in the system that would actually send that to the appropriate people.

Lots of ways to change the game, but the best thing I’ve seen that really helped pull the energy from the floor was a behavior HAZID type system that allows the team members to not only be affected, but now they’re a part of the safety program automatically, and they’re finding issues out. And we’re listening.

So there you go. 

Hilary Framke: I think at first it was try and get as many as we can, right? And now, okay, we’re getting this huge influx and especially once we set a KPI around and people feel like they have to, right?

Now there’s a bunch of non value added identifications, right? These aren’t hazards. 

Scott Davis: That’s a learning curve. And yes, you’re right. I’ve seen a pencil on the floor and I picked it up.. Here’s what I told the VPs and presidents of the company. I don’t care.

And that blew their minds. What do you mean you don’t care. And I go, I don’t care if I can get them communicating, I’ll take 18 pencils a year. And then he finds one good one, but we have to keep encouraging this behavior. So quit worrying about the pencils and let’s just keep an eye on the system and the system will take care of itself. And yes, you can go to that employee and say, quit looking at pencils or dropping this parasol down. You’re going to find those employees anyway, but that’s just human nature. The guys that don’t want to do it, don’t want to do it. But what we can do eventually is get to the point where we let those people know that this is a part of your performance objective and that you must have at least 90 percent of them worthwhile.

And we can do that later but to initiate a program like this, just get them talking. You need to be gentle for a while. And there are the naysayers in a good portion of this. But at the end of the day, that’s what supervisors and leads are for. And we can’t keep talking about pencils on the floor.

I get that. But it’s a start, you’ve got to get them talking. And eventually you’d be surprised what those guys will end up finding and then they complain that it doesn’t get closed fast enough. I think it’s almost like we need to give them something to complain about. Then they feel better about themselves sometimes.

But in general, I’d say at least 95 percent of the folks on the floor want to do this and they want to do it right. They don’t want anybody to get hurt either. 

Hilary Framke: It’s a great response, Scott, and I think it’s something that EHS practitioners, we sometimes get in our own way with these sorts of obstacles mentally, right? Oh, now this isn’t working because I’m getting all of this crud that’s useless to me and now I’m having to wade through the water. But your point is so well taken. I think it’s worth it to get one great one, isn’t it? Like you said, give me the 18 pencil on the floor.

If they care, they feel that we’re listening to them and they make an identification that adds value. 

Scott Davis: So that’s exactly right. But you do have the plant managers. They get so production driven that they don’t need to do one more thing. And you do. And safety is going to be continuous and you need to get used to dealing with it. HAZ IDs are probably the best form.

The next one is maybe right after that. You talked about what are the things that might change things, is engaging the supervisors into what we call a audit or a layered audit. And it’s a requirement that is a pre checklist that they have to go out. I’ve automated this, I’ve done the paper way, I’ve done it the automated way, but it really forces the supervisor to go out on the floor and look at specific subjects.

And to engage the floor. So they have to actually write the person’s name down. I will tell you that you have a handful in manufacturing that I would call are desk auditors and they don’t want to get out on the floor. They don’t even like people, but they’re a supervisor and it pushes them back out on the floor.

And what a wonderful way. It’s just a question and they have to go out on the floor and ask those questions on their own floor. I was fascinated at how well that worked. And it’s considered a monthly audit or a layered audit. You can call it all sorts of things. And every supervisor has to go out into his or her area and ask these questions.

Hilary Framke: I really like the idea of that. It’s almost like a focused inspection and behavior based audit at the same time. 

Yeah. Oh, I’ve never considered that or seen that.

Scott Davis: And I’m charging for that. So you can’t, that’s not free. 

Hilary Framke: Royalties out to Scott for anyone who steals that idea. But I can see why that would add so much value because like you said, it gets them thinking it gets them talking.

They find those specific instances. It might be ergonomic identifications or machine guarding gaps. You could go after specific risk profiles. What a great idea. Thank you for sharing. Let’s shift gears again. I would love to hear more thoughts. Where did you envision, what do you think, with all that you’ve seen in EHS and where it was, and where it’s going, what emerging trends do you think will transform our practice? 

Scott Davis: I’m going to tell you what I don’t think it’s going to transform.

I think that’s always going to need people. I think the industry is always going to need that body on the floor. As long as we’ve got humans performing human tasks, it’s going to take a human to find out what they’re doing. I’ve seen some technology that tried some ergonomic attempts to actually follow the human movement.

But it’s very difficult because it doesn’t always catch everything. So I still think that’s going to happen. I think universities are still struggling with the correct curriculum. I think they want to give out a degree in EHS or in health or in safety, and they’re missing a lot of things. I think they’re creating a curriculum.

I actually had one university kid that just finished with their MBA and hadn’t even been using Excel to use that I needed her to be able to do on a lockout tagout. And she said I haven’t really used much Excel. And I was like, wow. Okay. That was fascinating because she’d been doing school work so much.

There’s never been a need to use Excel. I think it’s still evolving. I think there’s a bigger need for EHS. But I think companies grab anybody that says they have experience with it, but they really don’t interview them properly and get people that really have the knowledge  and the background to really keep things moving forward. Cleaner, simpler softwares out there, I think that’s going to happen. I think there’s been some monster software releases out there that was developed for large companies, but they’ve never properly sized it. I think sizing software for these smaller companies is the way to go.

I think trying to sell them a full enterprise system which is just parsing off or taking pieces of the original software and trying to sell it. They don’t need a lot of extra stuff. They just need something to get the job done that you can add to later. 

Hilary Framke: Software thatt its the company versus the company that fits the software.

Scott Davis: They’re always trying to sell the large software because that’s what they have. And I think it’s not properly sized. And I do know that most companies even know how to use it properly, regards to record keeping and understanding of that stuff. And then I think the big one that I  think really needs to happen, because I still think they’re missing the boat on this, these learning management systems, the LMS type systems.

They’re good, but they still have shortcomings. They can’t do all that I’d like them to do. And I have never found one that could. And I looked at numerous ones, both an EHS softwares to LMS software. I think that is probably the trend because of record keeping practices or they’re learning about that. And more importantly, getting people out on the floor that really understand EHS. So hopefully that’ll push it to the right practice down the road.

Hilary Framke: That’s amazing. I love those responses, especially the one about how we’re training EHS professionals.

I struggled with that so much when I became an executive in EHS, with two aspects, right? One, finding the right person with the right experience for the role. Because as EHS is so broad and people will call themselves an EHS leader, but only really know environmental and only certain topics, or maybe they’re just very safety heavy and they don’t know any of the environmental topics, right?

So very hard to find someone who’s balanced. And then the other side of it is the application piece that you’re talking about. Like you have an MBA, but you don’t know how to do a basic quantitative risk assessment. 

Scott Davis: I found two that all the universities do not teach injury management, zero. I had a class. I’ve been co opting for years with the universities. And I had six students that had finished their four year degree, and three of them were doctors that were trying to get this MBA health certificate, and not one of them understood injury management with regards to understanding if you’re self insured or if you’re not self insured, how that affects the people on the floor, how that data comes in, whether you’re insured or not insured, how much you’re insured to. And then the management itself from the clinic side to the interfacing with the doctors, bringing the They have not a clue. None of them have actually done it. And that’s 10 students, I’d tell you over the last probably five years, maybe more that had never been taught anything about injury management, which is the essence of safety. If you don’t know how to handle the injury at the floor level, what’s going to happen when they leave and go home after they’ve been injured?

They’re not taught that at all. I even actually offered to teach the class at the university so I could have students that actually understood injury management. That’s been a lot bigger hole in what you call the transformation part because they’re not transferring that at all. That’s something they pick up when they get there.

Hilary Framke: Yes. And I still think that EHS practitioners with only experience are still undervalued. We’re looking far too much at what letters do you have after your name, what education, but do not underestimate those dark horses who spent their years in the fields and they’ve seen an application, and they’ve been deep in the trenches and they know the different tools.

Those are some of the best EHS leaders I’ve ever met. 

Scott Davis: That would be a hundred percent true. During my interviews with any of these folks, I asked them of anybody ever actually brought in and numerous ones have to do with injury management, which has to do with workers compensation or clinic interface and doctors and where the boundaries are, whether or not getting them on the floor, keeping them on the floor, looking at what a recordable actually is.

 It is such a front end of the safety program and not one of these health and safety MBAs actually had any of those classes. 

Hilary Framke: On the cusp of that, What advice would you give emerging EHS professionals looking to make a significant impact in their career?

Scott Davis: If I’m the EHS guy, I’m a coordinator on the floor and I’m trying to impact the floor it’s always going to be about communication. And if you’re bored, more communications. You can’t get enough on the floor. You can’t. But you got to get them listening. And the only way you’re going to get them listening is you got to start with that general manager, that plant manager.

If they believe it, it will happen. The funnest place to work on the planet is when your general manager’s wanting to know what’s going on the floor with regards to safety and what can he do to help. When that happens, the energy just pushes across the floor, of wildfire. But the last thing you need to do is work with a company and they expect you to be the EHS cop or the safety cop.

It’s those types of companies you really need to steer away from. If I was advising anybody during that interview, they should be talking about how they do it from the top down and the bottom up, but it’s never about the safety guy. If that’s the first words that come out of that plant manager and general manager’s mouth, they’re not looking for an EHS program.

They’re looking for a safety cop. There’s my advice. 

Hilary Framke: I think those are some difficult climates to work in. Extremely hard to get a level of success. When everyone is worried about you coming out and doesn’t want you to watch them and thinks you’re just out to get them.

Scott Davis: My favorite one, I’ll tell you a fun story just to share this, is that the employee went to HR to complain about me. And the HR guy said, why? And he says there’s snow on the parking lot and I fell and I loved his comment, he goes Scott didn’t make it snow

 But he fell because of me, not because he walked onto a bad spot or there was ice. The moment I heard that HR guy say that I damn near cried. It was so damn funny because it was like, wow, that’s the answer of all employees do that all the time. It’s gotta be somebody else’s fault if they get hurt.

And it’s gonna be the safety guys problem. And when companies go running at the safety guy, what did you do? And wow, it’s not a me thing. So those types of programs are tough to be around. That’s for sure. 

Hilary Framke: You got to have that shared ownership, that shared accountability, right?

For we all own the risk here. We all own the controls, the program, right? I’m happy to be your technical expert and to help and to guide and then to take our program to the next level. But when something goes awry, it’s all of us. It’s a we problem. We’re all gonna participate, we’re all gonna work to make it better.

Those are the best environments. I agree with you. Scott, it has been a consummate pleasure to have you here on the episode. Thank you so much for all that you’ve done for the field. So many contributions, so many industries. So much over the course of your career, your teaching, your co ops. You’re a true thought leader.

So thank you for everything that you’ve done for EHS. 

Scott Davis: No problem. Call anytime. 

Hilary Framke: And listeners, we’ll see you next time. Bye everybody.