PAPod 523 - Building Bridges: Redefining Worker Engagement and Mental Health in Construction

Show Transcript

WEBVTT

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Your five principles is on my bedside locker because I'm a saddle.

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You need to get a hobby.

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You kindly signed my copy of Five Principles.

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And on the inside cover, you wrote, to be read in the toilet only. Oh, my God.

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Music.

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Hey everybody, welcome to the Pre-Accident Investigation Podcast.

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I'm Todd Conklin. How are you?

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Is everything grand? As grand as can be. That's what I mean.

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So it's time for another podcast.

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How have you enjoyed what we've talked about so far? I just arranged kind of

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a fancy pants podcast that's coming up soon.

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So that's interesting. But how are you hanging in? Because it's kind of an interesting

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question to ask how you're hanging in right now.

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Because it's a crazy time and we're heading towards craziness.

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More craziness.

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More craziness. It's getting crazier. Yeah, that's what I wanted to say.

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Plus there's all the, you know, we're kind of swinging into traditionally kind

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of the season where stress is higher.

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There's lots of things going on lots

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of excitement and you know it just uh life just keeps just keeps doling it out

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baby whether you want it or not it's it's it gives it to us whether you're ready

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for it or not is maybe the better question it gives us to us things are grand here you know No,

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it's fall in New Mexico, and it snowed like crazy last week.

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I mean, like a couple feet.

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It was a lot of snow. I mean, it was a lot of snow for November.

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It seemed like it was okay, and everybody kind of lived through it.

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Although these big storms like this, especially these early big storms,

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what those are invented to do is to identify leaks in roofs.

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Because you cannot believe the amount of roofers that are everywhere.

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Everywhere I look, there's somebody climbing on a roof fixing something.

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So, and that, from a safety and reliability standpoint, is always an interesting thing to watch.

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Because, you know, it's high-risk work because there's a potential you can fall.

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Or maybe better, I should say, the potential you can land hard.

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But there's lots of pressure. And it's always an interesting thing to kind of

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watch happen. And I'm sure you're doing the same thing, but you really see it

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after a big, wet, heavy snowfall.

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You know, the kind of snowfall that comes in and breaks all the tree branches.

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If you're not an expert in snow, what happens is if it snows early before the

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trees have lost all their leaves and it's a really heavy, wet snow,

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which is great for like snowmen or snowballs.

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I mean, it's perfect for that. it's also

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perfectly aligned to break trees down and

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branches off and stuff so that means you've got power loss

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it's the whole it's the whole rigmarole it's very

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exciting but anyway that's going on and as

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far as i'm going geez man i got nothing but positive vibes to send into the

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world right now it's it seems like life is is pretty good i mean you know i'm

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just i just i'm trying I think what I've recently been spending a ton of time on,

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I'm working on a new project.

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In fact, next week is big project week for me.

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So I should have either great reports from the new project or,

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you know, horrible failure reports, which aren't bad because then that tells

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you to stop working on the new project.

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But other than that, life is life is pretty grand.

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I mean, it's a it's a it's a great thing. So today is an interesting pod, for sure.

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Maybe we should just jump into the pod, and that would be kind of a better way

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to do it. So let me just do this.

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Let's jump into the pod and talk about what I want to talk about today.

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Because it's been a topic we've broached a couple times.

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It's certainly an important and serious topic.

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I wouldn't say it's a terribly fun topic. But I think the potential solution

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can be really rewarding and pretty satisfying, and it sort of keeps appearing in front of me.

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So without any further ado, sit back and relax.

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We're going to have a conversation or two. In fact...

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We're going to get to cross the ocean today and talk to Alan Palmer.

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And if you don't know who Alan Palmer is, he works for an organization called JMJ.

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And you might have heard of JMJ, but Alan and I were on a call this week,

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actually, and this topic broached.

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And Alan's always super fun to talk to because he's a really nice guy. He lives in Dublin.

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So extra points right there. I mean, you know, at any moment of time,

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at any moment of time, YouTube could break out and I'm always kind of ready for it to happen.

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But we were talking about a project we're working on and this topic came up.

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So without much more fanfare, let's have a conversation.

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So alan and i were on this call and we were chatting away and he was kind of

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statusing me up on what's new and different and it's really funny because when

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you talk to these guys who do lots of safety work around the globe and that's

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you i mean we're i'm talking about us right,

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and you just kind of i don't know you just kind of chat about what's what's going on and what

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direction you see things are moving and what's interesting what

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what data do you see or

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feel out there that could be something we should be watching for that

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kind of normal sort of conversation and alan was telling me that it's really

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interesting that there's a lot of clients now moving towards tapping expertise

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from different places so it's it's sort of an indicator and you're seeing this

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everywhere, I bet you guys see it as well,

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is where once this was classic management knows what to do to fix this problem.

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And therefore we will dictate a solution to the workforce.

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And then the workforce's job is to be obedient. That's always hard to say,

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be obedient and do what it is management thinks they ought to be doing.

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And you know, I get, we can make a case. I mean, there's cases,

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we can make a lot of cases that there's good and bad to this, for sure.

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But I would suggest that's taken us kind of to places where we are now.

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I mean, it's sort of our origin story, for sure. But I'm not sure it's going

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to take us to places where we need to be or where we want to be or where we should be.

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And so it's sort of a classic conversation. You've had it a million times. This is not so unusual.

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And so that's kind of where this jumps in.

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Because to be really honest with you guys, this didn't start out as a podcast at all, not even close.

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This was a work call. We were talking about work stuff.

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And I didn't even think this would happen. And so what you're going to hear

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is I'm going to just kind of reach over and turn on record.

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Because you can do that now. It's pretty easy to do. In fact,

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I bet people do it all the time. But you can kind of reach over and turn on record.

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And I started to capture what Alan was talking about because I thought he was

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going to go in a direction that was going to really build on this ability to

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do better operational learning and how they were getting data from field workers.

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Maybe he was going to talk about the worker as an expert. I knew it was going

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to lead to some conversation that was positive because it was all set up to be positive.

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So what you're about to hear is I'm just going to clip on the microphone kind

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of mid-sentence and Alan's going to talk about engaging workers.

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What's interesting about this is where it goes.

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And so that's the part that I think is most interesting for us.

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And it's definitely something we should be talking about.

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So here's Alan mid-sentence talking about engaging workers.

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You know, we've got clients who are we've got clients who are pulling for,

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you know, better integration such that such that we listen more to the front

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line and have the front line say what the procedures should say.

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Yeah, it's like, hey, man, you know, they're they're they're now we're noticing

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clients pulling for that quite, quite a bit.

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Oh, that's great. That's so good.

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Mental mental well-being is a is a huge thing of course since the since the

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lockdowns yeah yeah yeah and probably should should have always been i mean

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thank goodness we should have moving into that so that's good yeah yeah,

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so you know we we did a thing in we did a thing in qatar was it last year no earlier this year,

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earlier this year uh we did a short

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development program for people from

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the field on major capital projects in

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raslafan city we called

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it village heroes and it's basically a

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group of people who volunteer to listen

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out for and be to be

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a listening ear for people who who have something

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they want to talk about oh that's so good and they're

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and they're what they're what they're

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trained in is one listening

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skills and two being able

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to notice oh oh i got what

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you're telling me could I suggest that you talk to

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this person or that's so good that's how about

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if I get you appointment for tomorrow because it sounds to me like you could

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do a talking to someone that sounds and it's so impressed by that it's all about

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getting out it's really about getting out ahead of suicide yeah yeah so my organization

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I work with a bunch one of my favorite organizations.

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Rassfield gory they just started up

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well just as wrong they've had a program they call

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it professional development coordinator but

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what they hired were chaplains right they

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now have they now have 14 of them wow and

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same thing it's it's just like your village hero it's been

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incredibly successful one of their professional development

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coordinators has performed which

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this is pretty amazing in the past four years

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like 14 company weddings but

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what they've well yeah 14 but what they've seen

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is this is saying it's just like your program it's so brilliant i'm

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so proud of you guys for doing that we probably

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can't do that enough unfortunately the downside

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to that is little companies don't have

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the luxury of having a village hero

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i mean they they probably have a village hero but but

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like in brassfield gory it's their job that's their

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whole job what a great program oh

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i'm so impressed by you have you thought about maybe writing that into a book

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he says he says kind of pointedly poking him with eyeball knives at you through

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the screen wouldn't that be a wouldn't that be a great book it would be it,

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And wouldn't you be the great person to write that great book?

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I could certainly be involved in it.

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Yeah, it's something where it's something we're gathering information on and

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gathering anecdotes about the impact of it, because there's definitely a compelling case study.

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And it could well turn into or take the form of a book, but there's definitely

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an interesting case study to be had out of it.

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I mean, there's one story where a guy who was on the training,

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and this is like a three-day training.

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It's not like a degree.

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It's a three-day training where they learn the kind of human default around

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listening, which is not.

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And then how to proactively switch into actually listening and tuning into another person.

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So they practice that in the training that they, they discuss the value of that

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and then, and then, and then they get distinctions around psychological safety,

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mental wellbeing and mental health.

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Like, like, like three different things.

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Three clear distinctions. So mental health needs a particular kind of treatment.

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Mental psychological safety is creating an environment where people feel it's

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okay to say what they have to say, whatever that might be.

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And these guys are getting the nuance of that stuff.

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And then they've got a whole lot of phone numbers

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and email addresses where they know they can reach out for help beyond themselves

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that they've got someone who needs something more a chat over a cup of tea yeah

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yeah yeah so so one guy one guy wrote back to the team who trained them.

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24 hours after the end of the training and he

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said i've i've already made a difference with this

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he said i was in the canteen i was

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chatting to somebody and he said he was

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very concerned because he hadn't been paid in three months

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and and he said in in

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less than six hours by having the list

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of numbers i had and having the people i knew had

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our backs in this endeavor i was

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able to get the thing sorted in six hours he got all his

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all of his money paid to him in one way one amount that's

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amazing just brilliant you know and and

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then there are other people who have referred guys on

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that they were worried about and they've spoken to professionals and

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gotten great help and they're in a much better condition than

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they were just just fabulous stuff going on i'm so

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proud of you that that is such i

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mean you've always done important work that's never been your problem you've

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never had you've never not done important work but it sounds to me like now

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you're doing the most important work you've ever done yeah it's it's a it's

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at a it's at a it's at another level entirely of kind of humanizing the workplace.

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So anyway, there's lots of good stuff getting created, lots of good stuff going on.

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I'd love to just keep checking in with you and let you know what we've got going on, what's shaping up.

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And then he goes on to talk about how we can contact and work details.

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So I stopped that conversation snippet right there. Now, I should tell you,

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before we go one little step further, I absolutely asked Alan if we could use this in the podcast.

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This is not some like secret recording without his permission.

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I mean, we definitely talked about it. And there's really no question about

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allowing people to have this conversation because it's such a serious conversation.

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And if you've not really thought about it a bunch,

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one of the challenges we have, and it's a pretty interesting challenge,

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is that according to the Center for Disease Control in the United States,

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which is kind of an important data collection point for us,

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it's a central agency that sort of collects data and is able to really look

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at that data over time. So it's trendable.

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It's what happens. construction workers really

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are committing suicide at a rate about 75

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percent higher than the general population so and

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to put that into real numbers which is kind of what we ought

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to be doing in 2022 6 000 construction workers killed themselves what's shocking

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to me is that numbers trending in the 2023 data to be right about the same number, which makes me think,

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if one were thinking out loud, that you could probably see it trending at that

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same number for this year.

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And what's interesting about this, and it's really interesting to me at a bunch

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of levels is this is a crisis.

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And this is a crisis that does two things for us. One is it calls us to action. Absolutely.

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I mean, that's why we're in this podcast. That's why the last conference we

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did, the Santa Fe conference we did a couple of months ago, we spent almost

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an entire day talking about this topic.

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But it also, I think, challenges us as professionals who look at resilience

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and reliability in the workplace to expand our horizons sort of past classic

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ankle sprains and hurt elbows.

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But what's more significant, at least to our discussion, I mean,

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when we hang out on the pod, is that there are some organizations out there

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that are doing some stuff.

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And you definitely heard Alan talk about what they're doing with the Village Hero Program.

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Or what Troy and the guys at Brassfield

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Gory are doing with their personal development managers program.

00:18:16.404 --> 00:18:21.204
But what I think we ought to be talking about as, as a professional sort of

00:18:21.204 --> 00:18:27.524
group of people is exactly the challenge Alan gave us in kind of right before

00:18:27.524 --> 00:18:30.864
I cut him off, before he started talking about boring work crap again.

00:18:31.224 --> 00:18:37.344
Right. And that is how do we bridge into looking at that whole person and a

00:18:37.344 --> 00:18:42.904
more holistic approach to understanding really the role workers play in the workplace.

00:18:43.244 --> 00:18:47.904
And my guess is, and I could be really wrong on this, I'm wrong on a ton of stuff.

00:18:48.544 --> 00:18:54.024
But my guess is, is that that holistic approach, which we've been toying with,

00:18:54.644 --> 00:18:58.384
looking at sort of safety in a different way for a lot of years.

00:18:58.584 --> 00:19:02.304
I mean, one of the things, I don't know if you guys think about this very much,

00:19:02.424 --> 00:19:06.784
but one of the things we say, which is just as common as the nose on our face,

00:19:06.924 --> 00:19:10.884
which is that the worker's not the problem, the worker's the problem solver.

00:19:11.780 --> 00:19:16.960
You know, that's a huge shift in how organizations perceive the workforce.

00:19:17.260 --> 00:19:22.100
I mean, if you really press me, it's kind of controversial.

00:19:22.200 --> 00:19:26.440
It's a giant shift in how thinking has changed.

00:19:26.740 --> 00:19:32.880
But what it really, I think, challenges us to do is to take that approach where

00:19:32.880 --> 00:19:35.380
we look at really the socio-technical,

00:19:35.520 --> 00:19:40.520
the place where the work meets the worker, and we expand it holistically to

00:19:40.520 --> 00:19:44.300
understand the context in which work happens,

00:19:44.300 --> 00:19:50.880
I think it makes perfect sense that a part of that discussion would be how people

00:19:50.880 --> 00:19:53.940
feel about the work, the workplace,

00:19:54.160 --> 00:19:56.460
their coworkers, and eventually themselves.

00:19:56.740 --> 00:20:03.600
Now, I would suggest we can't solve mental health problems because we're not

00:20:03.600 --> 00:20:04.820
mental health professionals.

00:20:05.340 --> 00:20:11.800
I mean, that's not what we do. But we are at a position where we can intervene

00:20:11.800 --> 00:20:13.920
on something happening.

00:20:14.100 --> 00:20:18.640
And those are the stories you hear, is that suicide numbers are really high,

00:20:18.760 --> 00:20:20.640
and they're really high among construction workers.

00:20:20.800 --> 00:20:24.480
So that's our sample group. That's the group we're looking at.

00:20:24.480 --> 00:20:33.240
What's amazing is that when you hear stories of how a person was rescued from

00:20:33.240 --> 00:20:37.400
some pretty deep and profoundly depressing thoughts,

00:20:37.640 --> 00:20:46.220
they were rescued by a culture, by the organization's context that really intervened

00:20:46.220 --> 00:20:47.480
before something bad happened.

00:20:47.480 --> 00:20:52.620
So suddenly the Village Hero Program or the Personal Development Program,

00:20:53.100 --> 00:20:58.720
that program of having somebody to talk to who is available and can connect

00:20:58.720 --> 00:21:04.980
with resources effectively, that's the key word, that becomes quite a big intervention.

00:21:04.980 --> 00:21:10.960
And I guess it's kind of like having a suicide prevention hotline working next to you.

00:21:11.220 --> 00:21:16.160
But I would think that that's kind of overly simplified, that what it really

00:21:16.160 --> 00:21:20.460
is doing is expanding the way we think about work,

00:21:20.800 --> 00:21:28.160
mental health, and the whole person across the whole entire culture of work.

00:21:28.920 --> 00:21:33.840
And that idea that we're looking at and understanding the culture of work,

00:21:34.180 --> 00:21:36.980
well, that's been a part of our conversation for years.

00:21:37.240 --> 00:21:39.580
I mean, you and I have been having this conversation for years.

00:21:40.240 --> 00:21:46.940
We've only had it around things like workplace safety and reliability, high-risk operations.

00:21:47.180 --> 00:21:49.660
I mean, those are important things, no question about it.

00:21:50.040 --> 00:21:54.600
But what I would challenge us, and this is as big a challenge for me as it is

00:21:54.600 --> 00:21:59.280
for you, is what does that mean for what happens next?

00:22:00.410 --> 00:22:04.150
And that's why when Alan sort of went into this conversation,

00:22:04.150 --> 00:22:06.270
which I didn't think was going to happen.

00:22:06.410 --> 00:22:11.670
I mean, I just I thought we were going to talk about the changing way we talk about workers.

00:22:11.830 --> 00:22:15.710
And really what I thought Alan was going to talk about is how they're reaching,

00:22:15.890 --> 00:22:20.170
even in these big, giant clients that they have, they're reaching down to the

00:22:20.170 --> 00:22:25.310
workforce level to actually solve problems and identify issues.

00:22:25.530 --> 00:22:30.210
I should have said that in the other order, identify issues and solve problems. There we go.

00:22:30.410 --> 00:22:35.890
It ended up being a discussion around this Village Heroes program and how effective

00:22:35.890 --> 00:22:41.110
it is, which is kind of the same thing Troy at Brassfield and Gorey did as well.

00:22:41.230 --> 00:22:46.770
He started talking about this program, not really knowing that what he was saying

00:22:46.770 --> 00:22:49.410
was kind of earth shattering and super interesting.

00:22:49.890 --> 00:22:52.430
It was just something they felt like they had to do.

00:22:52.950 --> 00:22:58.250
And that, I think, becomes a really important part of the conversations that

00:22:58.250 --> 00:23:00.270
we should be having next. Now, I don't have an answer.

00:23:00.770 --> 00:23:07.130
Let me take that back. I think we're starting to see some organizations develop

00:23:07.130 --> 00:23:15.010
in the field some pretty interesting and kind of effective knock on wood interventions for this problem.

00:23:15.170 --> 00:23:19.950
And that's how we're going to reduce the number of suicides amongst workers

00:23:19.950 --> 00:23:24.090
is we're going to intervene and somebody is going to have to do something.

00:23:24.090 --> 00:23:25.550
We can't hope it goes away.

00:23:25.830 --> 00:23:30.210
We can't deny it's a problem. We've got to take action. We have to intervene.

00:23:30.390 --> 00:23:33.950
We have to interrupt what's happening and change it.

00:23:34.130 --> 00:23:38.810
Just the same way we interrupt what's happening with fall protection or we interrupt

00:23:38.810 --> 00:23:40.930
what's happening with hazard identification.

00:23:41.670 --> 00:23:45.610
We're interrupting. We're intervening and making a difference.

00:23:46.410 --> 00:23:49.490
And what's amazing to me is that

00:23:49.490 --> 00:23:52.310
our peers are these are people that are for these we

00:23:52.310 --> 00:23:55.410
know these people there are for we know what they look we know what their job

00:23:55.410 --> 00:24:02.090
looks like our friends are out there actually doing things and the other thing

00:24:02.090 --> 00:24:06.730
i would add just because i think it's worth adding is that this must mean there

00:24:06.730 --> 00:24:11.910
are many many companies out there in the world that are suffering from loss.

00:24:12.430 --> 00:24:18.230
And so the restorative nature of sort of figuring out what we do when a good

00:24:18.230 --> 00:24:23.270
person removes themselves, not just from the work team or the workforce or the

00:24:23.270 --> 00:24:26.450
organization, but from life, what does that mean?

00:24:26.890 --> 00:24:28.550
And what's our next move?

00:24:29.070 --> 00:24:32.570
I don't know. The one thing I would say, because it's just us talking,

00:24:32.870 --> 00:24:40.150
is I wonder if we start looking at this and start really thinking of these interventions

00:24:40.150 --> 00:24:47.230
as positive and important parts of our responsibility in creating a workplace environment,

00:24:47.570 --> 00:24:54.290
I wonder if we won't also see a reduction in fatalities other than suicide.

00:24:55.648 --> 00:25:00.748
I'm just saying, I don't know. I don't have any data to prove anything,

00:25:00.748 --> 00:25:04.988
but I'm just saying, I wonder how much of this is interconnected.

00:25:06.088 --> 00:25:12.008
If you want to sort of hear my inside thoughts, I'm kind of guessing there's

00:25:12.008 --> 00:25:14.468
going to be a connection, but I could be wrong.

00:25:15.428 --> 00:25:20.648
This is what probably we should be thinking about for a while because it's clearly a problem.

00:25:21.148 --> 00:25:27.168
And I'll be honest with you, it snuck up on me. I didn't even realize it was the problem it was.

00:25:27.608 --> 00:25:31.968
And so I think we have to spend some time and talk to each other.

00:25:32.488 --> 00:25:36.328
And more importantly, I think we have to listen to what organizations that are

00:25:36.328 --> 00:25:41.908
really dealing with this problem are doing to deal with this problem.

00:25:42.668 --> 00:25:45.828
Because that's how we're going to start learning. And that's how we get better.

00:25:45.968 --> 00:25:49.868
That's how we've always gotten better. I mean, that's a big part of what we

00:25:49.868 --> 00:25:54.888
share is the ability to look at these ideas, to think about them,

00:25:55.088 --> 00:26:00.848
to engage peers and friends from around the globe and to see what we can get out of it.

00:26:01.388 --> 00:26:06.208
That's a really important part of what we talk about. And that's kind of why

00:26:06.208 --> 00:26:07.948
I thought this podcast was valuable.

00:26:08.528 --> 00:26:16.828
This was an important conversation to accidentally have and to fortunately have turned the record on.

00:26:17.680 --> 00:26:27.280
Music.

00:26:24.828 --> 00:26:28.268
What do you think not not

00:26:28.268 --> 00:26:33.388
the most fun conversation we've ever had but i'm not unfun i mean i i tried

00:26:33.388 --> 00:26:38.028
to keep it as light as i could and then i and i'm not sure it's it's a heavy

00:26:38.028 --> 00:26:42.008
subject but i don't think it has to be a heavy topic it's definitely something

00:26:42.008 --> 00:26:45.428
we should be talking about and the great thing, and I just know this,

00:26:45.548 --> 00:26:48.348
and you know it too, so this is kind of a cool piece of data,

00:26:48.588 --> 00:26:54.448
is the great thing is if we start the conversation and we start talking about what some early, early,

00:26:55.068 --> 00:27:02.248
leaders are doing in this area, this conversation will amplify and happen in lots of places.

00:27:02.628 --> 00:27:08.148
And there was a suicide prevention week this year in construction safety.

00:27:08.508 --> 00:27:12.628
I think it was is early in September. It's kind of when we first started talking

00:27:12.628 --> 00:27:15.288
about this. So that was a part of it.

00:27:15.588 --> 00:27:20.508
I'm not sure a weak awareness is going to be that good of a deal,

00:27:20.508 --> 00:27:25.568
but at least it starts the conversation, which I guess is the point of the podcast as well.

00:27:26.048 --> 00:27:29.588
So that was the conversation. Big thanks to Alan and Troy.

00:27:29.808 --> 00:27:32.108
Thank you too, even though you didn't even know you were going to talk about

00:27:32.108 --> 00:27:37.768
this because I haven't approved this with him, but I feel okay. I think we're okay.

00:27:38.348 --> 00:27:42.428
Thanks for listening. And let's talk more about this. You want to? I think we should.

00:27:42.828 --> 00:27:45.028
Until then, learn something new every single day. Bet you did today.

00:27:45.168 --> 00:27:47.748
Have as much fun as you possibly can. Be good to each other.

00:27:47.808 --> 00:27:49.808
Be kind to each other. And for goodness sakes, be safe.

00:27:51.280 --> 00:28:01.231
Music.