Are Safety Practitioners Hypocrites?

By Phil La Duke
Author: Stop! Don’t Shoot. Preparing for and Surviving Mass Shootings and Rampage Attacks https://a.co/d/2uUPQj4

I Know My Shoes Are Untied! Mind Your Own Business. An Iconoclast’s View of Workers’ Safety.
Lone Gunman: Rewriting the Handbook On Workplace Violence Prevention
Blood In My Pockets Is Blood On Your Hands

Contributor: 1% Safer

It can be tough working in the safety field. Mostly because of behavior. That’s right I said the “B” word, but I haven’t suddenly found Krause or anyone else from the Behavior Based Safety Patheon of ninnies. No, this came from some deep soul-searching. There are safety guys (this is a gender-agnostic term—look it up) who wear steel-toed shoes, hearing protection, work gloves, and long-sleeved shirts and pants to mow their lawns, but there are a lot more safety folks who behave in ways that they would never condone from employees in the workplace.

I’m not immune—I speed while driving, and I don’t inspect every tool for damage before I use it. I suspect there are two kinds of safety practitioners: hypocrites and liars.
First, let’s talk about the hypocrites.  I am one of them.  I will routinely point out hazards in the workplace that I wouldn’t even notice at home or if I did notice them they wouldn’t stop me from doing the tasks at hand. I have used a butter knife as a screwdriver, a credit card to scrape the frost from the windshield, and…well the list goes on and on as I suspect it does with most of you reading this.

So how can we critique the safety of the behaviors of workers—not just with the inane practice of formal feedback on behaviors—but also in those companies that don’t have a BBS system in place? Nobody talks about it much but people tend to see other people’s failings as the direct result of those people’s poor choices. Broke? You should have saved more. Unemployed? There are plenty of people looking to hire, who fell and cracked your skull on some uneven pavement? You should have watched where you were walking. Bit by a dog? You should have known better than to try to pet it. We routinely blame the victim while claiming that the bad things in life that befall us are acts of God. (For the record, I don’t believe in freak accidents or so-called “act of God injuries”. If God wants to mess you up then there is nothing I can do to stop it—I’m not getting in the middle of that.)  When we get hurt because of the logical consequences of our own negligence we whine about the injustice of it all.  I think this double standard is the root of much of the resentment people have toward safety practitioners.  The people on our worksites know and usually have witnessed the safety guy doing something stupid or dangerous.
So why then would they listen to the dimwit when he or she tells them not to do something?

As for the liars…these are the people working in safety who tell themselves that they would never admonish someone for doing something they themselves had done.  Unlike so much safety this isn’t just (perceived) a quick fix. For the most part, we lead by example, at least we try, and if we can’t get it right we at least will go a little easier on those workers who get hurt doing something similar.

Nobody likes a hypocrite or liars, especially in a position of power or authority and too many of us are both hypocrites and liars. I don’t like that, but I can’t walk away from it. I simply try to live by example—for example, when I am on a movie or television location I wear every article of PPE that could be required of me (thankfully I don’t work at heights.) Why would I subject myself to this (especially in the baking hot sun?) because when I do no one can ask me “why do I have to wear…when you aren’t?’ When they see me suffering in the gear they appreciate it and tell me so. We all need to work on the examples we set. What’s more, sometimes regulations will require workers to do/wear things that are ridiculous. When I am asked why we have to do it, I simply tell them that it is required by law and we can’t pick and choose which laws we follow; at least at work.

Warning: What follows may just teach you something but you won’t get any CEUs for it, you’ll just be better educated and informed but seriously who wants or needs that?

Mass shootings are on the increase, and so too are the charlatons giving bad advice to make a quick buck. What we are doing isn’t working, but we can’t give up. There are plenty of things we can do to predict and prevent mass shootings and rampage attacks. The so called experts, are still hawking the “run, hide, fight back, and GOOD LUCK” model of survival even though it doesn’t seem to have worked all that well. I am not pro or anti guns—a third of Americans own gun, and two-thirds of gun owners already have multiple guns. Most gun owners are law abiding and responsible citizens. But rampage attackers don’t need a gun—are we going to pass legislation to outlaw cars?

Before you dismiss this as yet another shameless plug for my book I want you to ask yourself these questions:

• What if anything is my employer doing to reduce its risk of a workplace attack?
• Do the people who are doing the hiring at my workplace know the warning signs of a workplace attack?
• What can I do to prevent workplace violence?

If you don’t have the answer to any of these questions, use your Amazon gift card to buy the book. It can be purchased in hardcover or paperback at Amazon or Barnes & Noble

I should warn you, this isn’t a book that is pro- or anti-gun ownership rights. The book has extensive sections on spotting an unstable employee (some people’s lives will take a dark and desperate turn long after you have hired them but there are always signs), the types of work environments that tend to trigger these events, and I recently returned from Dublin, Ireland where I spoke on how companies can leverage technology to protect workers from workplace violence. But all the books, magazines, and speeches in the world won’t change a damned thing if you keep thinking that it can’t (or probably won’t) happen to you or someone you love. You can bet your life that we will see more similar shootings in the weeks or months as people who are currently on the brink of sanity see the news reports and think, “Now’s the time”. WAKE UP, PEOPLE!!!! This book is peppered with the sarcasm, and self-deprecating humor of the first book, but it also makes use of my extensive knowledge of violence prevention in the workforce (that I gained as head of training and OD for a global manufacturer.) You should buy it.

#behavior-based-safety, #behaviour-based-safety, #culture-change, #phil-la-duke, #worker-safety

Safety Doesn’t Have To Be Sexy

By Phil La Duke 

Author: I Know My Shoes Are Untied! Mind Your Own Business. An Iconoclast’s View of Workers’ Safety.
Lone Gunman: Rewriting the Handbook On Workplace Violence Prevention
Blood In My Pockets Is Blood On Your Hands
Stop. Don’t Shoot! Preparing for and Surviving Mass Shootings and Rampage attacks

Contributor: 1% Safer

It seems like every day some overly earnest or greedy academic has found a way to repackage safety, mostly by reswizzling someone else’s theories on safety.  I wish people would just knock it off. Someone somewhere someone put the idea into peoples’ heads that safety has to be sexy, complex, and exciting.

There is an adage in sales KISS Keep It Simple Stupid, I think it should be Keep It (Safety) Simple. Simple.  Why are safety practitioners so reluctant to keep safety simple?  Take the revered Swiss Cheese Model developed by James Reason.  For the record, I have a lot of respect for James Reason, but I am not overly impressed by the swiss cheese model.  The model is used to illustrate the need for more than one error-proofing measure.  Reason argues that even the best mitigation has holes in it and those holes allow for process deviation and exposes people to risk. Sound principle. But we already had the Hierarchy of Controls which essentially said the same thing (although I haven’t met a ton of safety drones who understand that the H of C is not a linear process—that one control is not necessarily adequate and that in most cases it requires multiple controls working in concert may be necessary.

I have seen more safety orientations with Heinrich’s Pyramid (or dung heap as I like to call it) in New Hire Orientations than orientations without it.

So what does it mean to keep safety simple? Well for starters, anyone who works in the safety field knows that safety will never be simple, but there are some things that we should encourage in our safety training and safety stand-downs and talks.

• Understanding Your Rights Under the Law. Right to Know extends beyond a worker’s right to know the hazards he or she is working with, but to all the hazards at every location.
• Reporting Injuries Is Essential.  Too many organizations preach zero harm, and zero injuries to the point that it becomes zero reported harm and zero reported injuries. Without zero tolerance for blame, the organization loses critical information on system faults that cause problems. In other words, when we encourage people not to report injuries we are far less likely to reduce the chance of recurrence.
• Understanding Of Probability and Risk. While we can lower the probability of an injury and lower the risk associated with a situation, we can NEVER completely eliminate risk and there is always some probability of injury
• Situational Awareness. People should be reminded that it isn’t just their own work that they should be aware of, but of people working around them, passing through the work area, and things left where they shouldn’t have been.
• See Something, Say Something, Do Something.  Too many people get killed on the job simply because numerous people noticed something unsafe but didn’t want to embarrass the person in the kill zone.  Speak up.
• Answering Four Key Questions.  Before doing a job everyone should ask  themselves four key questions:

1. Have I been trained (not merely shown) how to do this job?
2. Do I know what I am being asked to do in completing this job or task?
3. Am I authorized to do this job?
4. Do I have the correct tools to do this job and are they in good working condition?

This is a start but let’s face it, our jobs require more than just encouraging the workforce to do these things.  A good part of our job requires us to do a better job with:

• Injury Cause Anaylsis.  I taught engineering problem-solving for many years and root cause analysis assumes that there is one (and only one) cause of a problem. But injuries are seldom caused by a single cause, rather, they are caused by multiple, interrelated causes and effects.  We need to focus on the top contributors to the injury and stop worrying about trying to find a single cause.  While we’re at it, when doing a root cause analysis (or a risk assessment for that matter) we should:
  • Gemba.  I’m told that gemba means “go to the point of occurrence” but not being a Japanese speaker I cannot refute or confirm this.  How gemba works is when doing an investigation or risk assessment we should be doing it at the point of occurrence (or where is being performed in the case of a risk assessment) and assess the situation.
  • Use repetitive whys.  It’s probably apocryphal but supposedly Japanese efficiency experts determined that the perfect amount of times one needs to ask “why?” was five, I have found that to be bunk.  You ask why something happened as many times as you need to or the answer becomes absurd.  It is also worth noting that you will have to use repetitive whys for every stream of causation.  It’s a lot of work so maybe the children’s poster contest or the safety BINGO will have to wait. 
    You can test the veracity of your conclusions by working backward by saying if A (in this case the end of your whys) is the cause would it explain why B happened, Complete this exercise until you have confirmed a clear causal relationship between your contributor and the initial cause.
  • Stay in your lane.  I have seen the Safety function charged with planning the company picnic, and sundry other things that either have nothing to do with safety or that are out-and-out stupid.  Safety is a full-time job and you don’t need to pick up extra duties to impress the dope that runs HR.
• Don’t provide information that you don’t understand.  Management lives and dies by Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) so we are often compelled to provide “brain porn” pretty graphs that seem important but offer very little insight.  Every bit of information that you provide should have three components: where we are, how we got here, and what should we do next? 
• Build business cases. Money is tight, but let’s face it, money is always tight—at the very least there is never a time when there is money to waste.  A well-constructed business case will help you free up funds that otherwise would likely be denied.  In most basic terms a business case consists of:
  • A description of the problem. This is more than “why we need this” a good problem description will include how much the current problem is costing the organization, what are the consequences of doing nothing, and how much money will it costs to fix the problem.
  • Return on investment. Probably the most overlooked element of a business case is Return On Investment (or ROI as it is most commonly called).  This refers to how long before the savings resulting from the solution will exceed the expenditure.  Typically executives get a bit nervous of any ROI that takes longer than three months.
  • Other options.  I used to work for a great man who happened to be the CEO.  Every time I would pitch something he would want to see the business case.  He would want the things noted in the first two bullets, but he also wanted a grid of all of the other solutions I considered.  The grid was four columns: the first column was the options, the second column was the strengths, the third was the risks, and the fourth column was for comments—essentially why I was or was not recommending the course of action.

I know it’s easy to be seduced by a snake-oil salesperson or an academic or author selling the next big thing, but you already have enough to do just by doing the basics of your job.

Dear Readers:
I have been writing this blog since 2006 and have been very resistant to accepting advertising revenue for it.  Some of you may think that I’m stupid for doing so, but I just don’t think I can remain impartial on the topics I address if I am receiving revenue from advertisers that are selling something with which I am philosophically or fundamentally against. 
It gets to be a drag writing post after post week after week, especially for no compensation—people tend to see things that they get for free as having no value.  So if you enjoy this blog I hope you will consider buying one or more of my books.  I don’t make much on these books (the perils of being actually published versus self-published) but I gauge my relevance (rightly or wrongly) based on my book sales.  If you have already purchased one or more of my books, thank you.  You have my heartfelt gratitude and what you hopefully see as at least a book that was worth the purchase price.  But even you can help me if you are so inclined by writing a review of my book (even if you hated it) on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads, or even in a LinkedIn Post.
And no, I won’t hold it against you if you just continue to read the blog and occasionally find the opportunity to think about what I’ve written,

Safety Is A Succession Of Giant Steps Backwards

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By Phil La Duke
Author: I Know My Shoes Are Untied! Mind Your Own Business. An Iconoclast’s View of Workers’ Safety.
Lone Gunman: Rewriting the Handbook On Workplace Violence Prevention
Blood In My Pockets Is Blood On Your Hands
Stop. Don’t Shoot!

Contributor: 1% Safer,

In 1985 I was working the line at Generalissimo Motors Fleetwood plant installing 1,600–2,000 seat locks (the metal part that attaches the seat bottom to its back) a shift. I screwed for a living and I came home sore. Quality was done by postinspection without any feedback, and despite The Big Three getting its collective ass handed to it by the Japanese its attempts at Quality were embarrassingly rudimentary.  

The companies KNEW they had to improve but really had no idea the steps they needed to take to get there.  First, they tried awareness campaigns. My favorite was ubiquitous signs that said DIRT FOOT. I took the sign literally because the plant was so filthy and I didn’t have the heart to tell them that not only were people’s feet dirty most of us were covered with a mixture of tool oil, metal shavings, and dirt of indeterminant nature from head to toe. But in actuality, DIRT FOOT stood for Do It Right The First Time (I don’t know where the two Os came from and assumed it was from an early sixties pop song—it was Motown after all.

When I would install one of the 2,000 parts incorrectly I would get a write-up. It made no sense. I didn’t do it on purpose and I didn’t think that it was reasonable that I would commit sabotage (a fireable offense that would almost certainly cost me my job). It felt like I was a dog who gets beat on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper a month after it got into the trash.  I protested but nobody listened.

Eventually, long after leaving GM, I was taught the Toyota Production System, Kaizen, and a host of other problem-solving tools by Toyota personnel and was tasked with being a charter member of my employer’s Continuous Improvement Team. I taught each and every employee these tools and lead problem-solving workshops.  It was an incredibly rewarding experience to solve these problems and to win over hard-core auto manufacturing teams. I saw the Quality function wither and die and a robust Performance Improvement function take its place.

Years later I found myself working in Safety and as Yogi Berra once observed, “it was like deja vu all over again.” Managers and supervisors routinely blamed the workers and used hackneyed awareness campaigns and incentive programs to get the poor stupid workers to stop hurting themselves.

Personally, I have always approached safety problems exactly as I would a quality issue; if the system breaks down you either hurt your people, your machines, or your products. All of these things are what the Japanese called “muda” (waste).  Waste is something that costs money and/or consumes resources but returns nothing of value, and except for an important life lesson, an injury doesn’t typically produce anything of value.

The parallel between Safety and Quality is that both started out in much the same place—the workers were the problem. But the two diverged from that point and quality got things done while Safety stood around with its thumb up its ass. 

Safety has  been chasing its tail ever since it ceased being a planning issue (construction companies used to budget for the number of workers seriously injured or killed in the same way they would budget for lumber or bricks. It was just a cost of doing business.)

Lately, I see a lot of chatter about the latest big thing in safety, but largely it’s the same old tripe.  A box of steaming feces is put into a different (or not so different) package.  Every couple of years new generations of snake oil salespeople keep regurgitating some new twist on Behavior Based Safety like a cat with a hairball, and trying to magically reprogram people so that they don’t make mistakes and therefore don’t get injured; it’s important and they either know this (and therefore are ripping people off) or they should know it.

What we should be doing is looking for a way to make the progress that the Quality Function has made—a relentless pursuit of improvement and a tenacious pursuit of answers. Many if not most of the tools are already there and easy to adapt to solving the problems that cause injuries:  reduction in process variation, mistake proofing, involvement of the workers in developing solutions, Gemba (going to the point of occurrence to determine causative factors),  looking, not for the single root cause, rather looking for interrelated causes and conditions that can act as a catalyst for injuries, repetitive why analysis, is/is not analysis and more. Not only will we be providing data to support our recommendations but we will be speaking the language of modern management and ultimately we will be contributing to the bottom line what more we will be able to prove and quantify it.

I’m not most people working in safety WANT to make things better. Given a choice, I think most of these people would rather just look busy than add any value to the organization.

Warning: The following may cause inquisitiveness and long-term exposure to it may make you smarter.

On December 2, 2022, my fourth book was published by Marriah Publishing. Stop. Don’t Shoot! is a painstakingly researched book on America’s number three fear (after being diagnosed with a fatal disease, and the death of a loved one). Like most of my books, it is filled with eye-opening facts and practical tips presented in a rude, curt, and irreverent style that many of you have come to know and appreciate. I called on many experts but two in particular to whom you should listen: Andrew Arena, who was head of Counter Terrorism for the FBI and was in the Oval Office with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the other heads of the intelligence agencies on September 12, 2001; Andy has forgotten more about mass shootings and rampage attacks then most people will ever know, and Jonathan Gold, a gunshot survivor and President of the Michigan Chapter of Giffords Gun Owners For Safety. Both are pro-gun ownership and both believe that there needs to be more accountability for how guns are used. It is available by following the link above, and it will be available in a couple of weeks from Barnes and Noble, and on the overseas Amazon sites.

#phil-la-duke

Authority Magazine interview

www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7007059767001051137-GdOP

My Newest Book

www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7006667402671271936-8nl9

What’s Wrong With Amazon

Why does Amazon hire rude, entitled, snot bags to man The phones at their headquarters? Do me a favor call and ask them at +1 (206) 922-0880. Please share.

Seven Ways To Tell If BBS Is Right For You

Author: I Know My Shoes Are Untied! Mind Your Own Business. An Iconoclast’s View of Workers’ Safety.
Lone Gunman: Rewriting the Handbook On Workplace Violence Prevention
Blood In My P

As many of you know I rarely miss a chance to take a cheap shot at Behavior Based Safety so it might surprise you that I am writing an article that supports the use of BBS in some circumstances.  

There are indeed many circumstances where BBS isn’t just the right system it’s the ONLY system for you.  So how can you know if  BBS is the right system? By answering these five questions:

1. Does my customer make me? There are many large, often global, customers who insist that—along with random drug testing—a vendor must have a BBS system in place.  Some vacuous, empty suit made this decision after his or her head was filled with nonsense by people who are faculty members of distinction from sixth-rate universities that churn out fecal books praising BBS more frequently than irritable bowel syndrome patient who had too much coffee after a hard night of tequila and bad burritos drops a load.  If you have read any of these books you know how apt the analogy is. These authors have never had to actually WORK in safety, nor have they run a safety department, in fact, none of them have actually been held accountable when their advice crashes and burns.
2. Does my boss make me? There are a lot of really stupid Safety Executives who can’t pour piss out of a boot with the instruction written on the bottom.  They want to command safety without knowing much about it besides the dreck that oozes out of professional conferences and is filtered by the people who actually attended the conference.  These bosses will LOVE BBS because its message is simple “it’s the workers’ fault.”
3. Do I value activity over results? If you want to LOOK busy without actually doing anything of value BBS is the system for you. You collect quantitative data with the vigor and zeal of a squirrel gathering acorns for the winter. But you don’t understand what the data means. What’s more, you don’t care. Your job is to make sure that supervisors watch workers and issue them a card for all the mistakes they made. You can make charts and display them in the break rooms or wherever you have the “safety meeting.”  And the best thing is you can blame the workers for getting injured and complain loudly about how overworked you are.
4. Do I believe that people are gods, incapable of making mistakes? A central tenet of BBS is that 85% or 90% pr 95% of all injuries are the results of human error, and by extension carelessness, stupidity, fatigue, sabotage, and a host of other deliberate actions and poor judgments made by the worker. Of course, YOU have never done something while operating on autopilot.  You think about each step required to make a sandwich and you think about everything that could go wrong as you make the sandwich.  And when you drive, not only do you have to make a conscious decision about what to do at every traffic sign or signal, and have to consult the driver’s manual to operate the turn signal.  Nothing you do is automatic and all your decisions are perfect and based on perfect information.
5. Do I understand the difference between philosophical safety and operational safety? Platitudes like “Safety is our number one priority”, “Safety is job one”, etc. are philosophical. Shy of the psychopathic drones in the workplace nobody would disagree that safety is better than rampant hazards run amuck. But Operational safety is results driven and seeks to fix the problems, not the blame.
6. Do I have a lack of respect for the scientific method? Let me begin by explaining how the scientific method works. You select two groups from your population that have enough people to be statistically relevant (don’t freak out there is a website that will calculate all that depending on your margin of error). Next, randomly decide which group will be the experimental group and which will be the control group.  Next, you would, in this case, use BBS on the experimental group and do nothing different from what had been done to the control group.  After a couple of months, you compare the results of the two groups.  If the experimental group shows meaningful improvement but the control group shows no improvement BBS has worked. If however,  both groups have either shown no improvement or meaningful improvement then BBS did not make a difference.  If all of this sounds confusing or like a waste of time, then BBS is right for you.
   Here is the point where I should mention that trying to do these kinds of experiments on actual people who could actually get seriously injured is incredibly unethical and behavioral scientists are notorious for making dubious decisions when it comes to ethics so trying to employ this type of experiment is of questionable value.
7. Am I lazy? I once had a client whose safety manager would completely end a conversation with “I don’t know” he was as lazy as a neutered housecat. He was always late for work and always left early.  He LOVED BBS because it required so little of his time, but actively resisted an organizational development initiative because he was held accountable for doing his job.  

So as much as I criticize BBS there are still a lot of good uses for it if you can answer yes to one or more of these questions it might just mean that BBS is a good fit for you and your “organization”.

Dear Readers:

I have been writing this blog since 2006 and have been very resistant to accepting advertising revenue for it.  Some of you may think that I’m stupid for doing so, but I just don’t think I can remain impartial on the topics I address if I am receiving revenue from advertisers that are selling something with which I am philosophically or fundamentally against. 

It gets to be a drag writing post after post week after week, especially for no compensation—people tend to see things that they get for free as having no value.  So if you enjoy this blog I hope you will consider buying one or more of my books.  I don’t make much on these books (the perils of being actually published versus self-published) but I gauge my relevance (rightly or wrongly) based on my book sales.  If you have already purchased one or more of my books, thank you.  You have my heartfelt gratitude and what you hopefully see as at least a book that was worth the purchase price.  But even you can help me if you are so inclined by writing a review of my book (even if you hated it) on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, or even in a LinkedIn Post.

And no, I won’t hold it against you if you just continue to read the blog and occasionally find the opportunity to think about what I’ve written.

Just after finishing my last book, Blood In My Pocket Is Blood On Your Hands (a book that everyone who LOVES BBS should read) I began writing a book on mass violence. It has taken me 2 years to write it because I reviewed mountains of research and true experts on the subject (one of which is a friend of mine from high school who, as it happens, is retired from the FBI where he was Special Agent In Charge of Counterterrorism (which included domestic terrorists like the idiots who are shooting up schools and concerts and…well you get the point). The name has morphed but we landed on “Stop. Don’t Shoot!” it’s fascinating reading and will be out very soon I promise. I am worried about the proliferation of so-called experts telling people to do the dumbest things imaginable during a rampage attack and you should be too. My book isn’t the only book out there on the subject it’s simple the best. Look for it coming soon.

—Thanks, Phil

#attitudes-toward-safety, #behavior-based-safety, #behaviour-based-safety, #bullshit, #free-porn, #phil-la-duke, #safety, #worker-safety

Three Weeks Ago I Killed My Brother

By Phil La Duke 

Author: I Know My Shoes Are Untied! Mind Your Own Business. An Iconoclast’s View of Workers’ Safety.
Lone Gunman: Rewriting the Handbook On Workplace Violence Prevention
Blood In My Pockets Is Blood On Your Hands

Contributor: 1% Safer

My brother Tom was found dead in his driveway (probably higher than Cypress HIll at a pre-Grammy party) of an apparent massive heart attack.  He was 67 and apart from being dead, he was in excellent health. But if I finally succumb to the tidal wave of stupidity mixed with red algae and raw sewage that is Behavior-Based Safety, I killed him.  But first a bit about my brother the human being who was taken from us too soon.

Tom died about a quarter-mile from the house in which we grew up in Hooterville.  The Hooterville police speculated that Tom was perhaps getting ready to mow his lawn.  It was a fine piece of detective work—the lawn was freshly mowed and he lay dead with his glasses lying between him and his lawn mower. It doesn’t take a forensic expert to determine that Tom wasn’t about to mow his lawn a second time. My guess is that he was on his way to his dig or to dinner.

Tom was a complex person, at times open and others intensely private. He worked at Great Lakes Steel for years working a swing shift and waking him up when he was working midnights could LITERALLY get you killed. When the mill closed Tom had every intention of going back, but when they issued the return to work order he confided in me that he would rather retire than go back to a swing shift (“swing”  makes it sounds fun but it isn’t).

When Tom retired he spent most of his time on archeological digs.  Tom was a self-taught paleontologist and was consulted by some of the most noted paleontologists in the U.S.  His work proved the existence of Paleo man in Michigan 10,000 years earlier than it was previously believed. He wrote at least one paper that was published in a scholarly journal and has a generally accepted theory (named for him) about how he was able to find Paleolithic artifacts in an area that was believed to be covered in water. He was an engaging speaker and highly sought after among this crowd of nerds.

Tom and I shared a love of storytelling and we talked about music, food, history—just about everything. I learned so much from him. He is the primary reason I don’t do drugs—he warned me about the harder drugs when I was ten, apparently believing that I was ready to head to the Hooterville heroin shooting gallery.

He was a star high-school athlete and played college football until he lost his financial aid because of a shoulder injury.  His latest hobby was writing crackpot articles (his words not mine) to the New York Times just to screw with them.

When Tom and I became adults we eventually became incredibly close. Tom and I differed on politics but could discuss them maturely with no acrimony. It helped that Tom thought social media was for idiots who needed to be told what to think.  I’m sure he wasn’t talking about me but yeah, the rest of you…

Tom had many, many friends of all ages and descriptions; and he also had a notable number of enemies, but what great man doesn’t?  (Tom loved that the asshat that tried to get Hooterville to condemn his house so he could swindle it away from him) died suddenly one Thanksgiving.) 

Tom was absolutely the least materialistic person I have ever known. His shoes and clothes were held together with duct tape, and he lived in squalor that is the thing of legends; it absolutely defies description. I know, I lived with him in a sort of a weird hippy commune while I was married and unemployed; fun it was not.

Tom loved animals more than most people.  I don’t mean that Tom really loved animals (though he did) more than other people loved animals, I mean he liked animals more than he liked most people. He could be kind and he could be vicious; he had a cutting wit that makes mine look kind and bland.

He spoke his mind and never suffered fools lightly, while at the same time being generous to an extreme. He loved burritos and was an excellent cook (although he never cooked at home).

I was always puzzled when people worried about “Big Brother watching them” I would always say, “What’s the big deal, when my big brother watched me he would get high and listen to music and let me do whatever I wanted.” Mostly my brother was a human being who was loved by his family and friends—just like the people injured and killed in the workplace. He didn’t, as they don’t, need some armchair psychologist clucking tongues at the fact that the behavior failed and not the hackney BBS system they are clinging to like it was their first born infant.

But according to what seems to be the majority of the Safety Industry and their zombie-like devotion to the cult of Behavior-Based Safety (or the derivative du jour) I killed my brother.  I could have been out there observing him while he worked. I could have coached him not to die. I could have made a crayon drawing reminding him how much his siblings, nieces, nephews, and great-nieces and nephews loved him and didn’t want him to die.  We reject the idea that sometimes people just die; that when one’s number is up it’s up.

Make no mistake if the logic of BBS is sound then I killed my brother, as did my other siblings, cousins, and well anyone who didn’t intercede. So now along with the void and sadness and loss, I have to feel the guilt of killing him. Or does this fetid pile of manure only apply to the workplace? If so why are we driving so much of it toward “safety in the home”. 

Many of you reading this will explain it away with a wave of disdain and think, “this guy just doesn’t get it.”  Well, this guy does get it. What’s more, I feel all the pain and uncertainty of someone close to me dying suddenly. No witnesses and no autopsy means no answers, just like when someone dies at work.

BBS isn’t science. It is a shame of the lowest order.  Nobody ever asks WHY a person behaves unsafely they merely lay a wreath of blame on the injured or deceased person.  Some say you can’t really put a price on human life, but the BBS consultants and firms have put a price on a single human life and they will money grub while deflecting blame. According to the logic of the dimwitted devotees of BBS, all gun violence could be ended by simply reminding people not to go on a rampage attack; the whole philosophy is garbage but since it’s easy to monetize and convince simple-minded executives that all you need to do is to condition workers to salivate at a bell every time you have a pizza party.

Oh, and I didn’t kill my brother and I miss him terribly.

Don’t mourn my loss—celebrate the man who I had the absolute privilege to have in my life for all these many years—the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Most of all he lived life on his own terms and adventured through a life well-lived.

Tom was the smartest person I ever met. Now I guess I am.

Dear Readers:

I have been writing this blog since 2006 and have been very resistant to accepting advertising revenue for it.  Some of you may think that I’m stupid for doing so, but I just don’t think I can remain impartial on the topics I address if I am receiving  revenue from advertisers that are selling something with which I am philosophically or fundamentally against. 

It gets to be a drag writing post after post week after week especially for no compensation—people tend to see things that they get for free as having no value.  So if you enjoy this blog I hope you will consider buying one or more of my books.  I don’t make much on these books (the perils of being actually published versus self-published) but I gauge my relevance (rightly or wrongly) based on my book sales.  If you have already purchased one or more of my books, thank you.  You have my heartfelt gratitude and what you hopefully see as at least a book that was worth the purchase price.  But even you can help me if you are so inclined by writing a review of my book (even if you hated it) on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads, or even in a LinkedIn Post.

And no, I won’t hold it against you if you just continue to read the blog and occasionally find the opportunity to think about what I’ve written,

WARNING: What follows may just teach you something but you won’t get any CEUs for it, you’ll just be better educated and informed but seriously who wants or needs that?

Some time ago, I read an article in the Metro Times (a Detroit Weekly) about a Facebook group essentially dedicated to encouraging attacks on women, Democrats, Muslims, and LGBTQ persons. There were hundreds of specific threats of violence. You don’t have to buy my book, but I wish you would. But if you want to help follow this link. Search LinkedIn to find out where these people work and encourage their employers to fire them. This isn’t a political statement, I would react the same way if people were saying that White Heterosexual Christian Men were the targets. Purveyors of hate need to feel real-world consequences. All it takes for evil to triumph is for good to do nothing.

Violent acts begin with violent thoughts that turn into violent posts on social media. How long are you going to continue to throw your hands up and say, “what can I do?” My second book, Lone Gunman: Rewriting the Handbook On Workplace Violence Prevention. answers this question. This is all new material that cannot be found anywhere else. In light of all the talk and panic around gun violence, and the shamefully bad advice some “experts” are giving I hope some of you will read it and pass it along to your executives and HR leads (go ahead, expense it, they will be glad you did.)

Before you dismiss this as yet another shameless plug for my book I want you to ask yourself these questions:

What if anything is my employer doing to reduce its risk of a workplace attack?

Do the people who are doing the hiring at my workplace know the warning signs of a workplace attack?

What can I do to prevent workplace violence?

If you don’t have the answer to any of these questions, use your Amazon gift card to buy the book. It can be purchased in hardcover or paperback at Amazon or Barnes & Noble

I should warn you, this isn’t a book that is pro- or anti-gun ownership rights. The book has extensive sections on spotting an unstable employee (some people’s lives will take a dark and desperate turn long after you have hired them but there are always signs), the types of work environments that tend to trigger these events, and I recently returned from Dublin, Ireland where I spoke on how companies can leverage technology to protect workers from workplace violence. But all the books, magazines, and speeches in the world won’t change a damned thing if you keep thinking that it can’t (or probably won’t) happen to you or someone you love. You can bet your life that we will see more similar shootings in the weeks or months as people who are currently at the brink of sanity see the news reports and think, “now’s the time”. WAKE UP, PEOPLE!!!! This book is peppered with the sarcasm, and self-deprecating humor of the first book, but it also makes use of my extensive knowledge of violence prevention in the workforce (that I gained as head of training and OD for a global manufacturer.) You should buy it.

#behaviour-based-safety, #blame, #phil-la-duke, #safety, #the-blame-game, #worker-safety

Opportunity

When opportunity knocks at my door it better have a warrant. Here is the video podcast which has no video because after one look at me they decided it would hurt circulation

http://safetyjusticeleague.net/the-podcast

The Safety Thought Police

Author: I Know My Shoes Are Untied! Mind Your Own Business. An Iconoclast’s View of Workers’ Safety.
Lone Gunman: Rewriting the Handbook On Workplace Violence Prevention
Blood In My Pockets Is Blood On Your Hands

Contributor: 1% Safer

I haven’t been writing much lately, well that isn’t exactly true. I have been writing a lot.  I am working on three books simultaneously and writing articles for Entrepreneur and Authority, but they aren’t the kind of topics or tone people are used to seeing here. So I thought I would put a burr under the establishment and address the real problem of the Safety Circle Jerk.

Dissent is essential to intellectual discourse and unfortunately, we have scarce little dissent in the world of worker safety.

I have been openly critical of the homogenization of thought perpetuated by “professional” organizations but I haven’t yet mentioned academia.  Let me begin by taking another jab at the “professional” organizations that are anything but professional.  Someone once had the great idea that people who had the word “safety” in their titles ought to know at least a little something about safety. This is, was, and will always be a great idea…in concept. I say “in concept” because the execution of the idea has been C– work at best. 

What was once meant to ensure that the people responsible for implementing safety programs were indeed qualified—either because of college education, certificate program, or years of experience—for the job for which they were hired. Like most certificate programs, many of these required Continuing Education Units (CEUs) which in my opinion are essential for keeping safety practitioners apprised of the latest breakthroughs in the field of safety.

Unfortunately, the thirst for CEUs has led to a stampede of people who only care about checking the box.  They don’t care if the topic of a speech is accurate, thought-provoking, or useful as long as they get that all-important CEU.  There are people out there who don’t give a damn whether or not they learn anything, gain insights into a complex issue, or even that they get ideas on how to solve a problem with which they are struggling. And for the record, this is not me crying “sour grapes” of my many years as a speaker at the national events I have never once not qualified for the award of CEUs.  But here is what irks me: professional organizations are the people who decide what courses qualify for CEUs. So there is at very least an ethical concern here if not an outright conflict of interest.

I contacted ASSP about having my books available for sale at their annual national meetings.  I received a condescending note that in effect read that the reviewers didn’t like my tone or “lack of professionalism”.  In my mind, the only criteria that should have mattered were whether or not the books were on the topic of safety, not whether or not the self-proclaimed intelligentsia of safety liked the book or not.  I wasn’t asking for them to endorse my books (I rather prefer that they don’t) just put them on a table and let people have an opportunity to buy them.  You can dismiss me as throwing a fit because they didn’t like my book. Maybe I am, but it pisses me off that these self-important, pedantic, waterheads are trying to restrict the diversity of opinion.  I have to ask myself how many other speakers and authors are the ASSP thought police trying to suppress? 50? 1,000? 10,000? Do they actually think that what they offer for sale (and by the way they would take the lion’s share of the proceeds so if you are thinking this is about money, think again) is somehow an endorsement? All it is is an endorsement of multiple points of view.

I cannot shake the feeling that I am no longer welcome as a speaker, contributor to their magazine and that my books cannot be offered through their online bookstore has more to do with my attack on the big lie of BBS and my criticisms of their most cherished heresy Zero Injuries than my tone and level of professionalism. My books deal with issues facing safety (I Know My Shoes Are Untied Mind Your Own Business), workplace violence prevention and how it connects to domestic abuse (Lone Gunman: Rewriting the Handbook On Workplace Violence Prevention), and the danger of safety incentives (Blood In My Pockets Is Blood On Your Hands).  I can only assume that since ASSP has blacklisted me (although they deny it) they are in favor of poor safety practices, workplace violence, programs that lead to fraudulent injury reporting, and anything else that contradicts the opinions of the corporate sponsors.  The thought police have decided that it is better to have conferences, events, and magazine articles that are based on Pol Pot’s reeducation philosophies than they are on fomenting intelligent debate on cherished, sacred, safety practices. 

The first step toward a dictatorship is to destroy anyone who disagrees with the status quo.  But who gives a rat’s ass as long as the safety drones get those precious, precious CEUs. At least once a day I read or view something that flies in the face of what I believe. In every case, I ask myself are these sources wrong, or has my own belief-set blinded me to the truth.  If I decide that they are indeed wrong, I ask myself, are they completely wrong? If so, why? What argument would I make to demonstrate the problem with their messages? If I find that they aren’t completely wrong, I try to determine the kernels of truth on which I can build something. 

For the record I’m not special, I am not above anyone, I’m smarter than some and dumber than others, but it worries me that these voices are silenced in favor of toadies who agree just to be accepted. As for the National Safety Council, they are beneath contempt. They are more bordello than any sort of organization—leering salaciously at any corporate sponsor they can con into being their John with a couple of bucks who is bereft enough of any self-respect that he will ignore the disease-ridden to give in to his prurient carnal proclivities no matter how repulsive. Coastal is a sponsor and coincidentally a “partner” of the cult of personality that is Scott Gellar. Doctor Gellar is a perennial speaker who has been regurgitating his same poisonous nonsense for the last two decades—but despite complaints of those who attend the NSC is not about to deny him a choice speaking spot—this is what they want you to believe.

Okay, so now let’s take a look at academia. Let me start by saying that there are scarce few college professors who teach safety and who never set foot on a workplace floor.  Many (and since I haven’t done the research I can’t prove that most, but I suspect it to be true) are either adjunct faculty or left the work world and moved into academia.  

Life in academia isn’t easy. A student can complain about you and even tenured professors can be shown the door.  Some complaints should be taken seriously, but a complaint by a student that he or she didn’t like the message or that the professor was not speaking politically correctly should not.  Learning is often about challenging what you believe and making you uncomfortable.  Too many good professors have been forced out of their jobs by the safety circle jerks and this creates another generation of people who come into the field with their brains stuffed with the sanitized view of the world promulgated by the safety thought police.

I have a State of Michigan Certificate in Training Design and Development (Adult education which I thought would be dirty—you know, like the “Adult” film industry.) that I earned from the University of Michigan.  Unlike my other degrees that I have earned (no one has offered me an honorary degree) that taught me very little about how to actually do the job, this program was actually very helpful, and the fact that I was working full-time while earning my degrees. I could actually separate the highly applicable from the theoretical bullshit. But if all one is exposed to is the theoretical bullshit and never is exposed to any dissenting point of view what then will become of Safety?

But there is a sinister side to the course work in the college Safety curriculum. Here again, we have a handful of individuals spouting what they believe and ONLY what they believe. How many of you have met a newly indoctrinated college grad who knows EVERYTHING? And they know that they know EVERYTHING because a single professor told them that he or she was going to teach EVERYTHING that was worth knowing in the field of safety. This isn’t a course in basic anatomy that (with hopefully the scantest of exceptions) doesn’t have conflicting theories regarding the names of the bones in the human hands, and yet it is taught this way. College is supposed to teach critical thinking skills. These sham organizations are supposed to reinforce these critical thinking skills and teach people how to apply these skills but they are merely “pay-to-speak” informercials for whatever the “organization” wants you to think. And if there is anywhere where people need to sharpen their critical thinking skills it has to be the safety function.

It is said that when you sell hammers the whole world looks like a nail. Well I say, the only way to sell bullshit is to make sure that it is the only option offered, and when it is the only thing available you will be grateful to have bought (because of the CEUs) it but that does not change its basic nature or its source now does it?

An executive at my last company (who hired me and was my first boss) once caught a lot of flack because I bad mouthed a particular safety philosophy that more than one of the firm’s key clients (read: spends millions and millions with the firm) I didn’t mention the company for whom I worked, nor the client, nor any information even remotely close to giving away the parties tangentially involved. The other executives were on my boss’s boss’s boss like flies on shit. He was nonplussed and said, “We hired this guy for his thought leadership and you don’t get to be a thought leader by telling people what they want to hear.” I still feel good that he defended me and my work, but more than that I feel good that he got what I was about and understood that conflicting opinions are not only acceptable but essential.

Dear Readers:

I have been writing this blog since 2006 and have been very resistant to accepting advertising revenue for it.  Some of you may think that I’m stupid for doing so, but I just don’t think I can remain impartial on the topics I address if I am receiving revenue from advertisers that are selling something with which I am philosophically or fundamentally against. 

It gets to be a drag writing post after post week after week, especially for no compensation—people tend to see things that they get for free as having no value.  So if you enjoy this blog I hope you will consider buying one or more of my books.  I don’t make much on these books (the perils of being actually published versus self-published) but I gauge my relevance (rightly or wrongly) based on my book sales.  If you have already purchased one or more of my books, thank you.  You have my heartfelt gratitude and what you hopefully see as at least a book that was worth the purchase price.  But even you can help me if you are so inclined by writing a review of my book (even if you hated it) on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads, or even in a LinkedIn Post.

And no, I won’t hold it against you if you just continue to read the blog and occasionally find the opportunity to think about what I’ve written,

WARNING: What follows may just teach you something but you won’t get any CEUs for it, you’ll just be better educated and informed but seriously who wants or needs that?

Some time ago, I read an article in the Metro Times (a Detroit Weekly) about a Facebook group essentially dedicated to encouraging attacks on women, Democrats, Muslims, and LGBTQ persons. There were hundreds of specific threats of violence. You don’t have to buy my book, but I wish you would. But if you want to help follow this link. Search LinkedIn to find out where these people work and encourage their employers to fire them. This isn’t a political statement, I would react the same way if people were saying that White Heterosexual Christian Men were the targets. Purveyors of hate need to feel real-world consequences. All it takes for evil to triumph is for good to do nothing.

Violent acts begin with violent thoughts that turn into violent posts on social media. How long are you going to continue to throw your hands up and say, “what can I do?” My second book, Lone Gunman: Rewriting the Handbook On Workplace Violence Prevention. answers this question. This is all new material that cannot be found anywhere else. In light of all the talk and panic around gun violence, and the shamefully bad advice some “experts” are giving I hope some of you will read it and pass it along to your executives and HR leads (go ahead, expense it, they will be glad you did.)

Before you dismiss this as yet another shameless plug for my book I want you to ask yourself these questions:

What if anything is my employer doing to reduce its risk of a workplace attack?

Do the people who are doing the hiring at my workplace know the warning signs of a workplace attack?

What can I do to prevent workplace violence?

If you don’t have the answer to any of these questions, use your Amazon gift card to buy the book. It can be purchased in hardcover or paperback at Amazon or Barnes & Noble

I should warn you, this isn’t a book that is pro- or anti-gun ownership rights. The book has extensive sections on spotting an unstable employee (some people’s lives will take a dark and desperate turn long after you have hired them but there are always signs), the types of work environments that tend to trigger these events, and I recently returned from Dublin, Ireland where I spoke on how companies can leverage technology to protect workers from workplace violence. But all the books, and magazines, and speeches in the world won’t change a damned thing if you keep thinking that it can’t (or probably won’t) happen to you or someone you love. You can bet your life that we will see more similar shootings in the weeks or months as people who are currently at the brink of sanity see the news reports and think, “now’s the time”. WAKE UP, PEOPLE!!!! This book is peppered with the sarcasm, self-deprecating humor of the first book, but it also makes use of my extensive knowledge of violence prevention in the workforce (that I gained as head of training and OD for a global manufacturer.) You should buy it.

#assp, #attitude, #behavior-based-safety, #behaviour-based-safety, #culture-change, #fabricating-and-metalworking-magazine, #national-safety-council, #phil-la-duke, #safety, #safety-culture, #worker-safety