Empowering Safety Leadership: Insights from Pat Flynn | Ep:3
Episode Transcript
Cary:
Welcome to another edition of Elevate EHS. With me today is Pat Flynn. He’s the vice president of safety at Groundworks. So Pat, welcome to the show and tell me a little bit about you, your organization and your journey in safety.
Pat:
Yeah, Cary thanks for having me. As you mentioned I’m the leader in the safety space here at Groundworks. Groundworks is the nation’s leading and largest residential foundation repair and waterproofing company. So we take a lot of pride in protecting our customers most important asset, which is the home that they live in, right?
So a little bit about me. I had an untraditional journey and where I got to where I was, I was a former operator. So spent a lot of time as the person managing the business KPIs along with obviously the safety components. I cut my teeth at a little company called UPS and it was over those years there where, the three legged stool approach of safety service performance was what I was.
Tasked with taking care of, and just through my experience as a coach and an athlete, it was unintentional how I fell into liking that safety leg of the stool of saying, ‘Hey, the training that I’m getting here, the way that I can be interpersonal with these relationships and lead and find change for the better on the health and wellbeing of the men and women in the enterprise’ was what took me from that operator.
to that full time safety leader. Some of my contemporaries, new out of the womb that they wanted to be a safety leader. And, I organically found that being and living and growing up in a business where, safety is important in most things, but certainly in the service based industry.
Cary:
Fantastic. Fantastic. So tell me a little bit about your organization. How does your team gather feedback information on safety hazards in the field and how does that help you at your level to shape those safety policies within your organization?
Pat:
Yeah. As you can imagine with having so many branches, we call it locations branches from coast to coast, border to border of crews who work independently once they break the threshold of our brick and mortar facilities, they have the tools, the materials, the resources, the crew gets together they’re working essentially unsupervised from a senior leadership perspective outside of the foreman, the co foreman, the installer.
Yeah. Yeah. Who largely make up the three man and woman crew, they’re out there. We use what we coined here, the safety survey, but it’s really an adapted JSA right, that job safety analysis. We empower them to have a critical eye. Based on a series of questions being from a production standpoint, that foreman is the leader of the crew who does all things tip to tail with the customer interfacing, leading the work that’s being done.
We’ve empowered them with that tool to be able to detach from the mission of. operational execution a little bit to look at some of the hazards that may be unseen and through it’s through that technology that we have 700+ plus crews give or or take and the street on road at the customer location everyday and it’s that technology that gives us a livetime viewpoint of what’s out there from a hazard perspective and largely it’s crunching that data and given the people the tools and resources it’s hearing that voice, right?
They’re saying something, they’re raising their hand based on the entries, the photos, the notes that we see. What’s unique about our business is, every single job is different, right? You drive down to the residential street, ten houses and nine of them look different. Being in that space, we’re doing the same thing.
We’re doing very similar things at each job. But each home is vastly different. With different environment, different job comes different hazards. I think that’s really the way that we’ve gotten in front of the hazard recognition is, using technology, to be actively engaged in almost real time with what our men and women are seeing out there in the field.
Cary:
Perfect. Perfect. And that’s a component, of empowering your frontline workers, but how else do you empower frontline workers to propose different safety solutions and influence. Policy procedure things like that. And can you cite any successful instances where that’s occurred?
Pat:
Yeah, I think it’s just listening to your people, right? They’re out there doing the work every day. There’s always going to be a better mouse trap of sorts which I’m several degrees separated now from that frontline worker, but for me to be able to, check my ego and say, ‘Hey, what I think may be the best mouse trap’
may not be because of what’s reality in the field. Just empowering that person from whether it be the authority to stop work and detach and he’ll call time out, make a phone call to the superintendent to say, ‘Hey, here’s something that’s going on. I’ve never seen before, right? This is very unique’ and taking those one offs, those unique situations and crafting policy or at least crafting direction that we can turn to it.
I’m a big believer in decision tree type metrics to where we can come up with a trigger point and have a similar decision be made from Cary from Pat, from Billy how bout there, pick a foreman out of the hat and they’re going to be able to steer in the right direction or the similar consistent direction, based on accumulation of tactics against that thing that we’ve seen from them voicing knowledge on, a hazard or situation.
Cary:
I love it. Love it. So we’ve all been in the safety field for quite a while, right? And a lot of our approach to training is right. Here’s my power point, right? I’m gonna sit you down even after the end of a shift or the beginning of a shift.
People aren’t always with it, right? And we did do that, right? We’re going to do that rote, here’s going through the slides and doesn’t necessarily tailor adult learning concepts sometimes into that how do you simplify safety matters for your team but ensure they have that technical understanding?
What are some of the things that you do to make training better or to make sure that retention is there or to translate this is the knowledge component, but what is the performance?
Pat:
Yeah. It’s a two headed snake here with wanting what you’re doing to train and how you train. I think there’s a few words in the industry that, that can be taken with a lot of over generalizations. And I think door training is one of them. So we don’t. We don’t call it training unless it incorporates what we’ve coined the MVP model, mental, visual, physical. Getting in front of a group of blue collar men and women and reading from a training toolbox talk script.
Yeah, that may happen here, but we’re not calling that training. That may be a debrief tutorial. It may be something, but it sure as heck ain’t training. So when you have certainly something from a technical component, you need to mentally describe it, right? Let’s talk about what we’re talking about.
With the training, let’s give you all the vernaculars. Make sure that we’re all saying the same things. And the second part the P, the or the V, the visual I’m now going to show you what I’m doing. Typically, we’re in the warehouse, we’re out in the parking lot, the lot. We could even be one of our training centers or a training room, but we’re going to demonstrate the thing that we’re talking about, whether it’s something as elementary as ergonomics with proper lifting and lowering.
Hey, we’re going to tell you about the eight keys of lifting and lowering. We’re going to get up and we’re going to demonstrate what those eight keys are, right? I’m going to show you get close, position your feet, bend at the knees, grasp opposite corners, right? We’re going to go through the progression.
And arguably the most important part is the P, the physical. Is to have the people who just heard you talk about it, who saw you do it, go put their hands on it. Hey, if there’s a 40 pound bag of cement, we’re going to set up workstations, we’re going to come, and we’re going to make sure everybody has taken a couple repetitions on it.
Especially in The blue collar spaces. Everybody learns differently. And, we would be remissed not to make sure that, we hyper focused on everybody’s learning style. And I know that there’s, dozens of books out there that talk about the ins and outs of adult learning.
But I think it can be fair to say the oversimplification of, using what we’ve called the MVP model will likely absorb to a vast majority, a high percent of the people out there. And then from the component of making sure that the understanding is good, is validating, right? Trust, but we sure as heck need to verify.
So we go through a process that we’ve coined DOK, depth of knowledge. So if you go up to an individual who just went through the example of the eight keys to lifting and lowering and say, ‘Hey, Carrie tell me about your ergonomics training and tell me about what, the eight keys are lifting and lowering’.
And if you can’t describe to me through your depth of knowledge, then there’s a gap, right? Whatever we did with our MVP training, maybe it wasn’t, particular enough on one of the components in vice verse, if you go and say, ‘Hey Carrie, tell me about ergonomics, best practices, lifting and lowering’
and the read back that you give me tells me that, Hey, you absorbed it, right? You’re that dry sponge. We dumped some water on you, didn’t overflow. It’s still with you. So that’s that you had, I love it. We don’t want to train without verify. We can’t go out and verify and question unless we’ve trained.
So we feel like that’s the bookends of making sure that we’re doing our due diligence with given the tools and resources and the knowledge to our people.
Cary:
I’m going to dig in a little deeper, that depth of knowledge. How often after your MVP type of in person, do you have different intervals that you do that depth of knowledge?
Is it random? Is it is it a specific frequency after? Can you just a little bit just if other people want to emulate. I’m just curious.
Pat:
Yeah, that’s a great question. So we have an internal standard, me and my team, we’re going to go and travel to each brick and mortar facility branch as we point them at least twice a year, our large branches in our, some of our bigger Metroplexes, we’re going to certainly get there more.
So we’re going to say, hey, at least bi annually, we’re going to come and test your knowledge. Excellent. If you’ve been with the enterprise for. five years, you may have experienced at least 10 depth of knowledge, questions and interfaces with the team. And typically it’s going to be more, right? So even if it’s something as elementary as the five keys, preventing slips and falls, the eight keys to lifting and lowering our Smith system on road driving behavior, We’re going to make sure that the basics are so ingrained that you’re washed in the blood that you now have the word safety in your title behind whatever it is production wise that you do for us.
Cary:
Perfect. So we talk about empowering our workers. What strategies do you do to foster the engagement in safety initiatives, whether it’s. Developing a new policy, whether it’s just getting kind of voice of the customer, kind of them telling you, how do you get that engagement? And this could be frontline, it could be supervisors, it could be senior leaders.
What are some ways that you get that engagement in your safety initiative? So it’s not you in a in your ivory tower, dictating kind of safety to employees. You’re doing safety with employees and with the organization.
Pat:
Yeah, of course. I think to boil it down and oversimplification is two is one, let folks know the why, right?
There always has to be a why behind the things you do. Hey, I’m going to pull this lever. I’m going to get that result. Make it make sense for whatever is important to that person, right? So if you’re talking to a business leader who is three layers away from the individual contributor, you’re going to make probably more of a, compassionate business pitch to them on how this is going to positively affect not only the morale and the well being of the men and women in the company from a business standpoint, right?
If you’re talking to the individual contributor or the direct frontline leader. It’s going to be a, ‘Hey, why are you doing this?’ We always joke that, people love our culture. People love coming to work, but they’re not doing it for free. It’s not a hobby. They’re definitely working towards something, whether they’re working to support their family, they’re working to, Save up for that next boat or that vacation to say, Hey, that boat, that vacation providing for your family that, that goes away if you have a workplace injury or incident, right?
So the things I’m going to help you stay away from that are going to help you continue to achieve your goals. And then if you can’t tell, I got a lot of energies. We love having fun with it. Historically, safety and, claims management and risk adverse topics aren’t the most sexy of things trying to move it.
Hey, come on. Yeah. Sorry, Carrie, sorry to break that to your brother, but historically you can get a little dry, it goes back. I think when we’re having those conversations, we’re doing that training is I think about when. I was that frontline individual contributor at UPS before I went into management.
I can remember the toolbox talks and the trainings that were led by one of my mentors named Ryan Zanoni, who he came with some fire. He made it fun, maybe crack some jokes. I can remember those, the ones I can’t remember. I can’t remember because they were unrememberable, right? They were forgettable because they didn’t speak to me.
They weren’t fun. So I think it’s an ability to make it make sense and make it important to the men and women, but also have fun while doing it and taking something that’s historically dry and getting fired up on it.
Cary:
Excellent. Very good. So your organization you use a unique approach to leadership training and development.
In your previous in our previous discussions together it seems similar to me to that servant leader and definitely very humble in the approach. Can you share that model with us and how it’s improved communication within your organization?
Pat:
Yeah we’ve internally adopted the model of extreme ownership that’s been made popular by Jocko Willink and, his first book called Extreme Ownership.
And then through echelon Front and their continuous work on making sure that people in. Any walk of life, whether it be personal, professional, understands that, taking ownership of your situation is going to be the first and foremost thing that’s important to move forward. Then with whatever you’re doing from a technical side or from, a process improvement side or from a relationship side.
So being able to instill, you talked about empowerment, it’s a big thing, but what’s a very unique culture here is. You will never find from the frontline day one new hire to the most tenured seasoned executive is no one’s ever going to say that’s not my job or they, the word they is not in the vernacular.
It’s if there’s a breakdown or if there’s a recognition, it’s, Hey, here’s what I’m going to do better. I’m sorry that happened. I must’ve, so there’s a prerequisite of. Taking a moment to detach and understand as a leader, you have the ability to influence all aspects of your life or situation.
And when you have a team where everybody does that powerful things happen. Going back to you, you were saying, how do you sell your message? How does it absorb, how does it resonate and trickle down? I think that’s one of the vessels that carries that voice. And that message is the ability for when you’re speaking to people who have a prerequisite.
Positive preconceived notion on, Hey, this is me. I’m going to make this decision to take care of myself in a safe fashion. Hey, this is on me as a leader to make sure that the men and women who I lead have the tools, the resource training, the follow up, they know that I care. And really it’s it sounds simple, right?
It rolls off my tongue because it’s easy to say, but do you think it’s always easy to do? Yeah, of course not. So I think it’s the dichotomy of understanding when to make a tough decision, when to have that certain level of ownership and moving forward with just making sure that the men and women who you are in charge of the ultimate health and wellbeing of have a, that same reciprocation of looking at it as, Hey, this is my and our responsibility.
Love it. I’m gonna throw you a curveball. You ready? All right, let’s see. So based on that, right? So say, for example I deviated from, our plan, right? Something unexpected. Come on, human error, right? Resulted in an injury. I’m the injured party, right? It’s common in the industry, right?
I’m sure is right? You blame the worker, right? Blame, shame, and then retrain me, right? Even though I’ve been doing it for 30 years. So based on that leadership model, right? And what you just described. How would your leaders respond to me being injured? Is one of your employees, right?
Would you guys follow that blame, shame, retrain methodology, or do you do something different? Something tells me you already know the answer to that. Of course I do. It’s getting upstream to say this thing that happened, the consequence of the thing that happened. Could have been a near miss.
It could have been could have been severe incident, me and my team, as of late, we always like to draw parallels and analogies of, as my right hand man here at work, Ryan always says, as I use the analogy, you never know how the cookie’s going to crumble, so you got to make sure you get upstream.
Think of a scenario where you’re watching, a basketball game, you’re in the fourth quarter and someone’s at the free throw line and the ball leaves their hand and then you cut it off. So you don’t know if the ball went in. Or if it missed, right? Hey, did he make it? But what can we do to ensure that I’m going to have confidence that when I hit play, the ball is going to go in.
Let’s look at the form. Let’s look at the stance, look at the flow of the placement on the ball. So regardless of the consequence. We can get upstream and as come in full circle on this for you is, as a coach or a leader, I can watch the film and I can say, Hey, the foot placement was bad.
I didn’t do a good enough job making sure that the person who took that free throw understood the proper foot placement. And if that ball ultimately, when I hit play bounces out, man that’s disappointing because I didn’t do all I could have done to make sure that all of those. A dozen or so techniques that typically line up to make that squish happen.
If that didn’t happen that’s because I didn’t give the right coaching on one of possible many type of methods or the stroke of the free throw. Absolutely. I love setting employees up to succeed. Wish it wasn’t so uncommon that’s right.
Cary:
Excellent. With that, I think we’ll call it a day. Thank you so much, Pat, for sharing your wisdom, your knowledge, and your experience. With the listeners and I, I love some of the concepts that you shared and if you could if you have any links, like to, your leadership approach or anything like that, that we could share send that to me and I’ll put it in the notes when we put this on for viewing.
Pat:
Of course. Cary, I appreciate your time. I appreciate you reaching out and To your point, it’s all about being able to reciprocate lessons learned out there because what we do isn’t a secret, right? Nothing out here is proprietary to where we don’t want other partners in the industry to be able to absorb and move forward with the most important asset of your company, which is the men and women who make it happen. Amen.
Cary:
Awesome. Thanks, Pat.
Pat:
Thanks, Cary. Alright.
