The Hidden Hazard: Mental Health at Work

Hey everyone, welcome to the safety brief, a new podcast from Intellects where we’ll talk about the hottest safety topics and offer perspectives on

all things EHS. Hopefully you’ll leave this pod with something to think about and maybe even something to apply. Today

I’m excited to be joined by my trusted co-host Scott Gatis, our VP of EHS

solutions in Alex, as well as for the first time in safety brief history, a guest on the pod. We have Rob Rob

Spettzer, mental health nurse practitioner who’s worked in the EHS space and is here to give a really great

perspective and his experience on today’s topic, the hidden hazard, mental health at work. We know about all the

normal hazards that EHS practitioners are tasked with controlling, but one that’s been emerging as a trend and one

that’s very hard to control as not many people are necessarily well-versed or familiar in how to control it is mental

health. So, that will be today’s subject. Really excited about this discussion. Let me toss it over to our

star guest, Rob, to introduce himself. Thanks, Trevor. I don’t know about Star, but uh you know, as Trevor said, I’m a

uh I’m I’m a mental health nurse practitioner. I’m also double boarded in um acute care medicine. So, I’ve treated

patients in and out of the hospital. Um you know, both physical medicine and um men mental health. Um and and really a

lot of that stuff is very applicable to what we see in kind of the EHS space. Um and this is a huge topic. It’s something

that really is has come to the forefront and I think come to the sort of national attention um more recently here in like

the last couple of years. So, you know, happy to be here. Thanks. Awesome. Pleasure is all ours. Scott,

you’ve spent decades as someone working in in EHS at the highest levels and I’m certain this is a hazard that you’ve had

to think about and one that evolved probably during the tenure uh you know your career as a practitioner. talk to

me about mental health as a hazard and how how you’ve interacted with that, how you’ve seen it.

I mean, it’s it’s quite and I’m glad Rob has joined us because this is certainly not a subject that I’m an expert in. Uh

I’ve seen the outputs, right, of of mental health in the workplace. And so I I am uh I’m stoked that we actually have

a guest that can bring a little credibility. I’m stoked. Absolutely stoked.

Absolutely. That uh that we can have this conversation. I I think you know as I

kind of look back and and I I guess by far I’m the oldest you know I’ve been doing this for 36 years and uh you

certainly I was seeing signs all the way back right when I when I started of mental health and how it affected uh for

me decision- making in the workplace. Um and um um I I was I I don’t know if I

recognized it as burnout, but I did recognize it as an unhealthy behavior

that I knew that I needed to uh to intervene with interface with and try to

figure it out. And uh when I started, you know, I was a junior, you know, specialist that didn’t have a lot of

horsepower to make those type of decisions. But you know, within five or six years, I was. And I I I’ll tell you

something that really resonated with me is when I joined uh Kimberly Clark in my

first, you know, site level leadership role is that I I worked for a facility

manager that was acutely aware that mental health had an effect on uh on the

way that we worked and it was very common for us to intervene. I I still remember uh having conversations just

simply about the ways people were feeling or some of the decisions that they were coming up with. I would even

go out to to the machine floor and talk about crisises like like children or or

financial pressures or relationship issues and it made a big big difference. So without a lot of training, I knew

just simply having conversation, having interventions with people that were going through things. And I think a

couple of things, Trevor, that really started to resonate with me is why I was not going through some of these same

mental challenges, right, or emotional challenges that other people were,

right? So that was kind of a clue for me, Rob, that people are just built different, right? They’re just built.

Not all of us are the same in this particular, you know, part of the discussion we’re talking about.

Yeah. Guidance like Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Rob. I was going to say that I I think that perspective that you bring, seeing that

historical perspective and how things have sort of evolved over time is is really valuable. And when and you know, obviously I’m newer to the space than

you, but one of the things I noticed when I got in was that there was sort of, you know, we really thought from the

safety side about physical safety, right? All all of so many of the initiatives are around physical safety. How do we build a better thing to

protect us from falling or getting hit and all those types of things, right? That’s something you can really like sink your teeth into. I can build better

webbing. I can build better attachment points. I can do all these different things. How do you address something

that is unseen that that people not not only is unseen and difficult to perceive, but that people intentionally

don’t want you to know about, right? How often do we know people walk around and they put this mask on? you you don’t you

don’t really want to share the fact that you might be struggling with something and all of us do. It’s the human

condition is that all of us are going to struggle with something at some point. How do you how do you attack something

like that when you can’t see it, you can’t touch it, you can’t grab a hold of it, right? And so I I was sort of struck

by how much focus has been and you it’s understandable, right? We understand why you would focus on something that’s

tangible because it’s sort of easy. It’s a lower hanging fruit. you can grab it and and these are very real, very very dangerous things that people are dealing

with, but it’s this sort of unseen stuff that you don’t typically see. Um, and and

because it was very physical based and we didn’t really know how to deal with this historically. What was the old adage? It was you when you get to the

workplace, you leave all your problems in your car when you shut the door. You leave that stuff in the parking lot and when you cross the threshold, you’re at

work now and this is what your focus is. From a mental health standpoint and just a human standpoint, that is completely

unrealistic. And and I think we now what we’re seeing is we have to address that

because it is so unrealistic to expect that people can just leave all their problems at home and they’re going to be

there waiting for them when they get back. Right. We carry that stuff with us all the time. You’re basically describing Severance,

the TV show. Uh right where I actually haven’t seen it, but I I keep needing to watch it.

It’s uh spoilers for anyone listening. Yeah, they they show up and as they go the elevator down into the office, their

memory is flashed essentially and they don’t know anything about the outside life. So they their problems are physically left at the door. Um but

yeah, I mean to that point, right, that’s a TV show. It’s not not a documentary. Uh and that’s true. So it’s

like a hazard that you have to manage because to your point, Scott, I mean it impacts it impacts what you do, the

decisions you make. So many incidents are the result of I’m rushing or I’m stressed or I’m careless or I’m not

thinking about things and those things have roots in people’s emotional well-being and their their mental well-being and what’s going on and the

stressors they’re facing. It’s interesting you said Scott that your your boss was so

I guess forward thinking about this and when you went out to talk to these people and have these conversations what

was the guidance for you? Was it just, “Hey, Scott, go have a chat. Go see what’s going on with

these people, or was there something more material?” Yeah. You know, Rob Rob kind of hit on

something because I I came out of college, right, trained to take and mitigate physical hazards in the

workplace, right? I had no training on how to deal with emotional, you know, issues or mental issues. Um but I I was

seeing them as as I said the guidance was was to to intervene right in cases

that seemed to indicate that we had an issue. So there wasn’t a lot of guidance

at the time right this was the the 90s. Uh but I also work for a uh for a

facility manager that did have his own right emotional um and he was very

candid about it. So I I think he had insight into what we were trying to to

to mitigate right in in the workforce. So the first thing was was to to go out

and have conversation to try to get a pulse right for what I was seeing or what other leaders were seeing in the

workplace. And the I I think what was bizarre at the time, it’s not anymore,

but our instructions were if somebody was not connected to the work that we were doing. And and when I say that,

right, we we had people that were reaching into machinery, right? We had people that were lifting and tugging and

pushing and and threading machines. So his instruction was if they were not connected to the work, let’s remove them

from the work, right? because we knew one thing that they had to absolutely have 100% focus on what we were asking

them to do. And and I I kind of look at that the way that I I just read I think

I just watched it on NBC like in 2022 I think there were like 6,000 uh

construction workers that committed suicide, right? And and I just kind of I was stunned by that. How could that be

happening in constructions and what were the reasons? or could there have been something that that stopped that that

could there have been an intervention? So I I think even without having that formal training the intervention was for

me to have that conversation with a frontline employee to really ask very candid questions and and the good thing

is is that uh I I I worked in a very mature organization where we did ask

those those mature questions, right? we really did want to come down to understanding what the issue was and if

that employee was open at all. It was just very common for us to say, “Listen, we know you’re having a relationship

issue. Go home, you know, kind of work on that for the next three or four days. We’re going to pay you, right? We’re

going to we’re going to pay you while while you’re gone while you can get that kind of settled.” And even things like that, right, where

they knew that they had an out where they’re not going to lose pay, you know, during this time away that they needed to to to go home and deal with things.

It it was a tremendous benefit and you know Trevor we’ve talked about this I had the safest site you know at that

time in Kimberly Clark and I think it was these type of things right that we were doing

that were very innovative at the time where we really did want this whole idea and again this guy that I I work for he

had this idea of whole person health right and he knew it wasn’t just physical things that we really had to

address it was this whole person so we talked about things like physical school, right? Improvement. We talked

about mental improvement. We talked about a lot of different things. So, uh, so again, you I didn’t have a lot of

training, but I knew how to talk and I knew how to get down to a very granular, you know, idea of what was going on in

that person’s, you know, life. And I had the authority to send people home with pay and we all did as as leaders.

Even the team could do that very same thing. So, it was a very mature organization. I know we’re not all like that. But years later, right, I mean

this is not a divergent from this present topic, but you know the the UK,

right, the United Kingdom started, you know, they started understanding that mental health was an important part of

what they were seeing and and risk there, right? And they, you know, it’s a radar, right? You you basically record

those type of events now. And that’s still not happening in the US. But I

kind of look at that and go, there’s something there, right, that we really need to look at. I mean, it’s definitely a risk and but

exactly like we it’s it’s been a minute since I’ve been in school for for environment and health and safety and

it’s been a little bit since you were in the as a practitioner, Scott, but like I know I didn’t receive any explicit

training necessarily on having these conversations or even on identifying these risks in a sense yet it’s such a

trend. I mean, Verdantics reports that about half of companies they they reach out to in their annual survey are are

thinking about this and managing it in some way. But EHS folks are asked to do something maybe a bit outside of scope

even though it certainly falls into it’s a risk. It’s a again c can cause negative outcomes and that’s the EHS

person’s job. Rob, from your perspective and your background in your training, I mean what is Yeah. How how can people

have these conversations? EHS people, how can we better prepare ourselves to play this role as well as the classic

physical safety role? Yeah, I I think there’s so much in in in what you guys have both just said that that we can

sort of unpack around that topic. I mean, it’s interesting that you point out the UK. Um there’s been a lot of

research done in Australia um as well around these topics. If people are familiar with the mates program, MATES,

um so much really good work has come out of that. And these were these were mental health programs that were designed around the concept of of

providing peer support um to within labor workforces. And you know what you

were just describing, Scott, and going out and having these conversations that is that is peer support, right? That’s

the model for it. And the fact that you were doing it way back then and that you had an organization that was supportive of it is is really special because

there’s a lot of organizations now that even having breadth of understanding that we have today really haven’t embraced doing those things. And part of

the reason I think they haven’t embraces it is what you’re bringing up, Trevor, which is we’re putting people in a position to do

something that is uncomfortable and that they may not really be trained to do. And I think there’s a there’s a major

distinction that that we should make here, which is between what peer support is and what what that role really

entails and providing like formal mental health services because that’s not what we’re asking people to do. We’re seeing

somebody like me in a clinical setting or if you if I was brought into an organization or something like that. Um

what you would typically see is that that’s a very different power dynamic, right? You’re bringing in and it’s sort of an expert patient dynamic and those

are very those are sort of prescribed pathways in the way that we treat people and the way that we go through therapeutics and use different

techniques. Um but that’s very that’s really not for this my opinion that for

this population that’s probably less likely to be successful than having off-the- cuff peer conversations. This

is not, you know, we we have to tailor what we’re doing to our population and our workforce populations are, as you

know, predominantly male, predominantly more stoic people who really don’t want to talk about these things. It’s

uncomfortable. And the only way, like, as we’ve said, these are invisible problems, right? So, the only way you

can get access to it is to start that conversation is to have it. And so, the question is sort of how do you do that?

And yeah, we can provide training and and those types of things. But the biggest distinction when we do that training is to say to people, look,

we’re not ask as an EHS professional, you are on the front lines. You are in a position to watch your workforce. You

see what’s going on. You get to know people’s tendencies. You get to know how they work individually and within a group dynamic. And you’re really the

point of the the the the tip of the spear who’s going to identify this stuff because you are proactively, if you’re

doing it right, you’re proactively surveilling your population. You know that if a guy he normally acts like

this, something’s off with this guy today. It’s just something, right? It’s your gestalt because you’ve seen him.

Now, how do I start that conversation? It’s it’s and that’s where the training part comes in, right? and and it’s getting and I think people get more

comfortable starting that conversation once they realize that we’re not expecting them to be therapists and

because it’s scary, right? It’s really scary to try to have a therapeutic conversation with somebody when you’re you might get into topics that you

really feel illquipped to deal with. And and so what we really try to focus on

and tell people is look, you are not trying to solve a problem here. What you are trying to do is be a conduit for

that person to express what’s going on. And we, you know, I [clears throat] I

I’ll talk a lot about like our population again because it’s male-dominated, but obviously there’s more women entering the workforce now,

uh, as far as labor workforces, but at least as it applies to men, we’re really good at internalizing things and and we

don’t want that stuff to get out, right? It’s why we put that mask on. It’s why the a person who looks happy, sad,

miserable, depressed can look exactly the same, right? And we we don’t know. And so the only way we know is is to

start to like put out those little feelers, have those conversations, sort of embed ourselves in the workforce to try to figure out something’s not right

with this. And and then we act as the conduit for that person to share at the level they’re comfortable with. That

process from a mental health standpoint, that process of going from an internalization to an externalization of a problem, it is it can be a little bit

traumatic for a person who’s not used to sharing those types of things. But it is the way forward for these people. It’s

the way forward for them to be able to start to feel more comfortable and and

quite frankly we spend a whole lot of time at work, right? So the idea that we’re going to

shut these things off at work, spend, you know, 8 10 hours there, then turn them back on, it it just isn’t

realistic. If we do this right and we can get people to be comfortable in these roles or they’re sort of

interacting with people, your mental health can improve at work, right? instead of it being this this burden

that I carry with me. But again, it’s really important and I think that’s that’s a really crucial piece because our EHS people themselves hearing these

stories, hearing this stuff, some of that can be traumatic and and they take that burden on themselves. So, how do we

sort of prepare people to do that? And it really is emphasizing the point that you are having peer-to-peer

conversations. I love the point that you made, Scott, which was you were having conversations with people who were

experiencing things that you hadn’t experienced. However, I bet you’ve experienced

something similar, right? It may not have been the exact same thing. Maybe maybe in me a situation produces anger,

but in somebody else, it produces anxiety. In somebody else, it produces depressive symptoms, but we’ve all

experienced something that’s triggered that. So, that’s that’s the sharing part of this is we actually, you know, at the peer level, we can really say to each

other, I may not know exactly how you feel, but I’ve had an experience and this is how it made me feel and this is what I did

about it. and you sort of get into this cadence where people get more comfortable sharing things. It becomes less stigmatizing to share those things

and it becomes this environment where people now really rely on each other and trust each other. Not only are you helping the mental health standpoint,

your productivity goes through the roof. Teams become cohesive, right? You you have all of these ancillary benefits

from an employment standpoint as well as the fact that you’re really helping people. Yeah. I I think where I’ve been I um

I I think this right safety performance has always started before safety right

and and to explain that is that I could literally pin my relationship building

to building trust right to building the integrity and the ethics of the organization to how well I was going to

perform in safety right so if I wanted great safety performance I had to build

relationship ships. I had to build trust in in the workforce. I I literally had to build these partnerships within my

organizations. And once I was on that that path, they would talk to me, right?

So, they trusted me. They they knew that I was someone and and again, I mean, I’ve worked for some great people, but I

I had the president that I worked for actually at Kimberly Clark and said, “I want you to treat everyone as your

immediate family members, right? What would you say to them?” Well, you would have conversation, right? You would

really inquire about what was going on. And and once you’re able to do that, I

think you’re exactly right, Rob, is that performance gets better, quality gets better, right? Maintenance is just

better because we’re we’re interconnected, right, or what I kind of call interdependent on each other where

we’re collaborating. And uh and once you can kind of get that I think Trevor

that’s kind of the magic potion right of leading safety is these type of collaborative connections where you

trust one another where you really kind of are in this together or you kind of lose the title right and you just become

another person there that may be doing a different job but you’re you’re more equal and and I think sometimes you know

we we kind of brushed on that about you know why do we see this so much in construction? I’m not sure it’s only

construction, right? But we have data that suggests, right, that that it’s it’s a rampant problem in construction.

Is it because they’re more stoic? Is it because they may be subcontractors and they don’t have these relationships with

a GC or something? Right? So, there’s probably a lot of different things going on. I guess I was fortunate because I

always had these organizations where I had them within the walls, right? Where I could actually build those

relationships. Well, that’s kind of another path to go down is well, how do you quickly establish relationships in a

way that you can make, you know, positive change on on construction? I feel like I’ve

heard a potential relationship between Yeah. the the suicide problem, kinds of

like the kinds of workers that work in construction, more transient type workers, maybe ones that don’t have a steady job or are away from home more on

a big project, right? there’s like a whole new set of hazards or a a change

in the likelihood of maybe personal issues depending on what the nature of the work versus a a factory worker that

works at the same factory that’s 15 minutes away that’s coming in every day. A lot more stability leading to potentially just a I don’t know what the

right word is here, but less likelihood of you mental health impacting issues and on managing well-being in the

workplace as an as an EHS professional. So yeah, having those conversations with people that relating relating to them

without necessarily having worn their shoes or walked a mile in their shoes. And it’s funny because Scott, you and I

have been trotted out to talk about safety culture, you know, infinity

times, countless times in conferences, webinars like this. And while there are so many things that technology can do to

help you manage culture, and while there are so many policies you can put in place and best practices,

to an extent, it all just comes back to talking and embedding the culture the good oldfashioned way, right? Like internalizing a set of beliefs and

values just by being accessible and and having everyone feel like so and so is looking out for me and I’m looking out

for them and we do things safely because that’s just kind of what we do here and we care about each other in a way. Maybe

that sounds too kumbaya on the campfire, but that is safety culture at the end of the day. No.

Well, I think it is Rob and I ask you to kind of come in on this, right? Is that I’m at the top of this funnel, right,

when I when I intervene and interface with this person, but I do need to get them to someone that can set up steps or

a path, right, to get to a positive conclusion. How do you look at that,

right? what’s what is that once you know I I kind of equate it to to how we used

to tell people well there’s an EAP call them right I think it’s more than that you know I think we have to be more

purposeful at the beginning right to get them to the right person 100% agree and I think that that really

mirrors like how we actually think about human beings right and and so again as

we’ve sort of talked about like EHS professional is kind of at the tip of the spear. You’re the one who’s going to identify. But if our strategy is okay,

our company’s got an EAP or some other resource like that. And our entire strategy is based on, okay, we identify

this person and now we we uh basically push the, you know, point them towards the EAP and the EAP sort of takes it

from there. Again, we have to look at our population and see is this is this realistic? Is this are we are we doing

this because we don’t know how to help them or are we doing it because we think

that that is the correct solution. Now an EAP as far as I’m concerned is a part of the solution but for many populations

it can’t be the entire solution because again if you think about like think about heavy labor workforces right and

but we could make different parallels to different industries but if we think about labor workforces we’ve already

talked about this is a population of people who for whom um sharing is not

comfortable and even outside of that therapy which is what EAP essentially plugs you into some sort of mental

professional, right? Somebody like me or or or a psychiatrist or a therapist, social worker, those types of things.

And they’re going to put you, you know, they’re going to do some sort of evaluation, a triage type process, and then they’re going to set up some sort

of therapeutic session management, something like that. Now, I think we can all, you know, if the three of us sat

here and thought about 10 people that we’ve worked with, how many of those people would willingly jump into that process and say, “Oh, I’m on board. let

me let me go and sit through these five or six therapy sessions and I’m going to do it and I’m going to share everything and it’s it’s just not very realistic,

right? And and I say that as somebody who has done these things clinically. One of the things one of the points that

I make when I when I’m talking to people is that it’s I talk out of sort of both sides of my mouth, right? I talk I talk

through the the lens of a mental health professional, but I also talk out of the lens of just a guy and and or some guy

who has an opinion about something. And what I have found is that when I’ve had authentic conversations with people just

on a peer-to-peer level, I find those conversations in some cases are more therapeutic than the formal therapy

sessions I’ve had. And and again, we have to look at our populations and see what’s most appropriate. But the key to

me is authenticity. when I’m talking to people as a therapist or in a

therapeutic setting, a clinical setting, there are certain things I will not say and I cannot say because in my training

I’m not going to do that. So, for example, if I was having a therapeutic session with somebody, it’s all about that person, right? I’m going to

encourage you to share. I’m going to encourage you to talk. I’m going to ask questions back at you to try to get you to continue to explore what it is you’re

talking about. What I’m not going to do is tell you that I personally, Rob, has had a similar situation. I’m not going

to tell you that, you know, I suffer from depression also or that I have periods of anxiety also that because

why? Because in a therapeutic setting, it’s not supposed to be about me. It’s supposed to be about you and your exploration and it’s it would be, you

know, professionally inappropriate for me to inter interject myself and my personal stuff into that. Not that we

don’t ever share anything, but not at the level that we’re talking about now. So, how do you get a person who’s who’s

used to not talking about anything and all of a sudden you stick them in an EAP and is very linear, right? It goes in

one direction only. I think the way you really want to do that is you start at

the peer level and you have authentic conversations with people. You get them in the habit of sharing because you’re

sharing, right? Self self-disclosure encourages self-disclosure. So when I start talking about myself, it becomes

less about in a peer setting, it becomes less about me trying to tell you what the right thing is and more about us

sharing an experience, which is man, life is tough sometimes. We got to deal with whatever it is. So now what have I

done through that? It seems simple, right? It’s it and and and in some ways it is, but I’ve had an authentic conversation with somebody where I’ve

shared something about themselves, they’ve shared it, and now neither each of us feel less alone than we did when

we started that conversation. Now over time what happens it just becomes

natural for you to have that conversation and then you’re going to start it with somebody else and you’re going to start it with somebody else and

so you sort of build these networks of support. Now when and and we got to remember right that mental health exists on a

spectrum. So we’re not talking necessarily we could be talking about people who have formal mental health diagnoses or we could be just talking

about any one of us on any given day who’s having a bad day who’s having anxiety who’s having whatever.

The key is peer peer support and authentic conversations and that network

of support that we’re building helps people on the day-to-day basis when the when and if somebody has toggled over

now on that spectrum again it’s it’s not it’s a continuous spectrum of mental health when they’ve toggled over into

something that’s more serious now because we’ve established this authenticity this rapport and we’ve made

them more comfortable now when I when I direct them towards the EAP they’re

going to have way more success. They’re going to interact. They’re gonna they’re going to um participate in that in that

the more formal therapeutic stuff way more easily than they would have before because now they’re used to having that

conversation. And importantly, when we when we t I use the word turf, but it’s

not really when we direct people to an EAP, that doesn’t mean that we as EHS professionals stop. It doesn’t mean our

job is done, right? It means we’re going to continue that peer relationship. We’re going to continue checking in with that person. we’re going to continue to

do all the things that we were doing at our level. Why? Not because it solves the whole problem, but because to your

point, it treats them like a member of the family. You’re checking in on them. You’re doing that stuff, and it’s going to make the formal things that we’ve now

established far more successful. You know, Trevor, one of the things I

heard Rob say, and I think this is maybe the number one lesson for EHS

professionals that are listening or our leaders that are listening, right? And I wrote it down, right? be brave enough to

share about yourself, right? Be transparent. But I think Rob, you said it best is be authentic because I think

99% of every problem that somebody else is going through, we’ve gone through it, right? We we’ve gone through those

problems. They’re they’re pretty common, right? So being authentic enough to say, I have been there. I’m not there today,

but I’ve been there, right? And we can talk about that. What What do you think about that, Trevor? Does that work with someone as young as you are? Is is that

something you would expect or? [sighs] Yeah, I mean it’s it’s funny listening

to all of this. There’s so many programs and and tools in place, but it it just it keeps coming back down to Rob, what

you said has been so kind of eloquent and concise in a way that it’s just about having a conversation, like get

people comfortable talking, not having therapy, not reaching out to the EAP, not some structured check-in that is

explicitly about mental well-being in psychological safety per se, but just conversations

and openness and give people the forum with which to talk about whatever they

need to talk about, but make sure that opportunity is there. It’s going to be tricky because like we said an early,

you know, if you have some young EHS person just out of school that goes to site and goes to some 55-year-old

construction worker, it’s been there forever. And you know, now you maybe you have a great forward thinking EHS boss

just like you did, Scott, and you’re supposed to go out there and have the conversations, but this guy’s not interested at talking. Like, he’s just

not interested. you want to continue to kind of crack that nut, but as you said, stoic standoff, like not

this is nope, nope, we’re not having this conversation. I’m going to get back to work. What we have to remember is that again,

very different from a therap when I see somebody in a therapeutic setting, I’m they’re coming into my office and I’m seeing them today, maybe I see him once

next week, you know, so I see him a couple of times a week. These are these are snapshots in time. There’s a whole lot of stuff that goes

on in between those things, right? And and so we have to remember from an EHS standpoint, EHS

professionals, that you don’t have to crack this nut in a day. With most people, you’re not going to be able to because it’s not

about you are not a therapist. I’m not asking you to try to make somebody better. I’m not asking you to fix their

problem. What all we’re trying to do is create an environment where over time, some people are going to want to share right away.

Some people are great sharers and they love talking about stuff and it’s wonderful and other people don’t want to talk about anything ever over time.

That’s that time is our ally in this situation, right? We we want to establish that. But but to the point you made many times, Scott, was you’ve got

to establish that trust. Take the title out of it for a second and just be somebody they can talk to.

I think one of the crucial pieces of trying to attack this is to get you have to get buyin from leadership and you

have to get buy in from the top. without that it just is not effective because you know I think we all know that there

some people view EHS professionals as what the corporate police to to make sure you’re doing everything safely and

I’m going to come over and sight you if you don’t do this or that or the other thing that hat to to tackle this problem

we’ve got to take that hat off or at least turn it to the side or something because we we have to be able to talk to

people as if they’re human beings we to your point Trevor we can we have technologies we can develop technologies

around this but those technologies can’t take the place of this. They have to support our efforts, but they can’t

really replace them. Absolutely. The concept is so darn simple in a sense yet hard to execute,

but it makes all the sense in the world. I want to We’re running out of time before we have to rename from the safety

brief to something else. But, um, I want to touch on one topic before before we end. Also, we we’ve talked a lot about

the hidden hazard, right? mental health at work and and how to how to approach that and how to maybe make people more

accessible. But that’s very much the EHS person still focusing ultimately on their job which is identify hazard,

derisk hazard and proceed from there in a continuous cycle of identifying and mitigating risk. But what about the the

mental health of the EHS professional themselves? Right. EHS professionals are in a an interesting spot. You mentioned

a second ago, Rob, the corporate police. you on one hand have this kind of responsibility of just the actual safety

of people and when Scott I’m sure you can attest to this when you’re the safety leader and someone gets hurt it’s

not it’s not just whatever worker messing up a messing up an email or the quality of a widget or you like there’s

real consequences that go so far outside of work you know there’s things on the

line and you’re trying to protect people like that and I I mean I’m trained in EHS like E, we talk to HS people all the

time. I feel like a lot of them do have this bigger sense of purpose about the role in a lot of cases. So, you’re

tasked with that. You need to carry the burden of when things do go wrong. You need to be a person that’s going out and having conversations. You’re a technical

person. You’re a personable per. There’s so much that goes into the life of an EHS professional in a lot of areas where

mental health issues could creep in. Like there’s there’s opportunity. How do you, Scott, how did you deal with that

or or have you dealt with that? It’s a great thing because I it’s a great it’s a great question. I I’ve

worked with professionals that have quote felt the burnout right of doing the roles most of the times and some of

them have worked for me or have been associated with me. They have left themselves in the center right of the

organization to be the decision desk you know so they’re the most technical. They’re they’re the one that you must

come to right for the magic answer to your problem. So they have put themsel in the center of this organization where

everybody comes to and at the end of the day they’ve got a priority list of 15 items that they didn’t get done, you

know, because they just didn’t have time. So they they work longer, right? Or or they work the weekends or or they

think about it when they’re away from work. I I won’t that I ever disengage from work. You know, there are nights

that I lost sleep because I was worried about something, but normally that wasn’t the way that I that I wanted to

work. I’ve never had a a a too big of a team to do all of the work that I needed

to do. So I found the more that I could spread my work, right? So maybe at the beginning I always kind of start in the

center to build technicality, right? Or technical expertise within the organization and then I look for a way

to get partnerships established in the organization so people could take my work away from me. Right? And and it’s

not the fact that I was lazy. It’s the fact that if I could connect them to some of the work that I was responsible

for doing, it did a couple things, right? It meant that they were going to participate with me and they were going

to partner with me to lead safety and health or environmental work out further in the organization, right? So, it meant

they had skin in the game. And when they had skin in the game, they were willing to take a a micro part or a mini part of

my role from me and do it. So that allowed me to kind of draw down my

priority list and be there right for the most important parts of my row and then I kind of went outside of that group

right so when I started in and corporate work or trying to share outside of the plant that I was in I had to have those

people right so I wasn’t there on a daily basis so I went outside of that work and then they were only using me

for really really important things so it’s a long way to say is that if you can build competence in the organization

if you can build capacity in an organization so they give back to it. You’ll be in an organization that

supports you as as an EHS professional. I think it gets a little harder and it may be some of the the reason that we

see some of this and and you know verticals like construction right where

you may have new people or transient people u Trevor as you said where you’re seeing new people the turnover is great

right so you may have to do things differently but even there you could take a a a small you know central team

and you can work on their competence in different ways to take parts of that away from you I would say this is I

never I’ve never thought that I was the most competent, the most technical in

the EHS space. I I’ve never thought that way. What I wanted to do is have balance, right? I I wanted to be able to

have balance across everything that I was responsible to do. And a big part of that was was building capability to do

my job in the workforce and to give them the capacity to do it. And the other thing was working on behaviors. What

should we see? And that’s not only looking for observations and getting feedback. That was having engagement,

right? That was just having conversations with the workforce because I I did find the more they knew you, the

better they performed, right? The better they were willing to just talk about things. So I I think there are some ways

that we kind of put oursel in a box as professionals saying, “I am the policeman of the county, right? Come to

me for any problem that you have.” And once you do that, you do you do pile on a lot of work that you just really

simply cannot get done or I would not have been able to do it. So my my magic always spread it out, you know, if you

possibly can. Makes sense. What about you, Rob? What do you think about that? Yeah, I think you know I when we think

about EHS professionals and particularly as this like to your point, you sort of become the go-to person for a a vast

number of things, right? Some of which you’re prepared to deal with and some of which you aren’t. But but because you’re there and you’re present and you’re

embedded in the workforce, whatever that workforce looks like, you just de facto, you become that person.

And so I think as organizations, we have to think about as that role expands, right, beyond beyond just physical

safety, beyond all the other stuff they’re going to dump on your plate, now we’re talking about, okay, well, how do we how do we support people’s mental

health and and those things as well, right? So is that that burden could even potentially grow and in a way that

people might not be super comfortable with at first. So I think as organizations we really have to think about how are we supporting our EHS

people in that process, right? We we often think about things like

debriefings after traumatic events. You’ve got some big bad thing that happens and and we bring people together

and we talk about it. Critically important. It’s it’s part of critical incident stress debriefing. Um and and

it’s and it’s a a process that we use. Could we also use a process just a check-in debriefing once in a while with

our EHS people to see how you’re doing? Right. the not everything we put we we tend to put so many big processes in

place for big events but big events while they are very scary

and they’re and they’re and they’re you know their their sort of signature events they don’t happen that often and

so on a day we we have to think about what’s going on on a daily basis how am I getting how how is this person just getting through this week getting

through this day whatever it is so so do we should we think about things like more informal short you know small group

debriefings those types of things just to get together. If we’re going to encourage our workforce to do this stuff, maybe we get all our EHS people

together and and they start sharing things. They set up their own peer groups, right? I’ve seen on I’ve [clears throat] seen in in certain

labor forces where a couple of people decided to start a group and and they and they would get together like on a on

a pick a day Wednesday at you know after work they would hang out for 15 minutes and talk and at first it was a couple of

people informal just getting together you know talking whatever people started joining they started coming in and then

in toolbox talks to use the construction example in toolbox talks they would mention hey we do this thing if anyone

wants to join it’s fine whatever but [snorts] stuff like that that is that that is also sort of um for EHS people

to talk because now you you establish peer groups where these people really can relate with each other. Oh yeah, I

dealt with that last year, right? And and that was really tough and it was tough on me. This is how I got through. So those types of things where we we

typically think about them after a very traumatic event when they’re critically important can also be utilized at a much smaller scale just to sort of have

check-ins, get people, you know, just help people manage the day-to-day stuff because when we’re talking about, you

know, stress, burnout, these are all very real things for EHS people. If your EHS people are experiencing too much

stress, too much burnout, are they can they really do what they’re supposed to be doing? Can they really support the workforce in the way that we want them

to? So we have to support those people, right? It’s it’s in in health care we

call this similar concept um caregiver fatigue, right? And it’s people who it’s a it’s a it’s a concept where you’ll

often see it in people who have like a a a family member who has a chronic

illness um and they’re taking care of them every single day. They love that person. They want to help them. They

want to do everything. But that burden becomes very very real. Um and it’s and

it’s called caregiver fatigue. This is a we have very similar concepts in EHS, right? You’re you’re responsible. You

internalize these things. You see the pain people are going through. Now I’m asking you to talk about it. We’ve got to take care of these people

or they can’t do their job effectively. [sighs and gasps] It makes all the sense in the world. And I just don’t think people think about it

like that. It’s just it’s always the employee base and not the the me of in a weird way. Go ahead, Scott. Sorry.

Well, I I would just say I think Rob is right is is that when I kind of look back in my career, I was sometime HR. I

was sometimes in this person. That was the quality. We we I I’ve never been in

a vocation where EHS touches everyone else more deeply than almost any other

activity, right? In in a organization, uh your chaplain, right, so we we just

touch so many people differently. I I can see, right, where professionals can be fatigued themselves, right, and kind

of suffer through this burnout. But I think Rob’s exactly right is that there are things, you know, and and many times

we got to learn to say no in a very eloquent way, right? We just got to say I I can’t do that too. And and that is a

big problem for us because I think we are like health care professionals is that it’s very difficult for us to say

no because we’re very passionate about what we do, you know, and that’s what makes us great. Yeah. You know, is

passionate about our roles. So yeah, we are great, aren’t we? Let’s end on that. [laughter]

All right. No, but it is it is time to wrap up. Uh Rob, you have been incredibly valuable to this. I really

appreciate your time today talking. This has been insightful, I hope, for our listeners, but also insightful for for

me personally as a professional in the space and I’m sure sure you as well, Scott. So, just thank you so much.

You’re welcome back anytime as we continue to blow up and climb up the charts here. Thank Thank you guys for having me. It

was it was a great conversation. Awesome. Thank you, Rob. Cool. Well, thank you everyone for listening. I really appreciate uh

everyone’s attention and uh we’ll catch you next time on the safety brief. Thank you.