In this Longshore Insider Podcast, AEU's Mike Jernigan and Matt Hockman speak with Donjon Shipbuilding's Health and Safety Manager, Jason Reynolds, about his company's safety approach and involvement with the OSHA SHARP program.
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Transcript
Announcer:
Welcome to the Longshore Insider Podcast from The American Equity Underwriters. At AEU, we are passionate about helping waterfront employers protect their workers and their businesses. Join us as we explore practical strategies for improving workplace safety, effective claims management, and much more. So let's dive in. Welcome to the Longshore Insider Podcast.
Mike Jernigan:
Hello and thank you for listening to the AEU Longshore Insider Podcast. In this series, our focus is safety. Specifically, we're speaking with health and safety experts about what they do to develop and maintain a culture of safety among their teams and throughout their organizations. I'm Mike Jernigan with the American Equity Underwriters, and I'm joined by loss control manager Matt Hockman to provide his perspective on AEU's approach to safety, and Jason Reynolds, health and safety manager at Donjon Shipbuilding. Matt, Jason, it's great to have you here this morning.
Matt Hockman:
Thanks for having us.
Jason Reynolds:
Thanks for having us.
Mike Jernigan:
So Jason, tell me a little bit about what you do and what your company does.
Jason Reynolds:
So what I do, I'm the health safety and environmental manager at Donjon Shipbuilding and Repair, and we are located in Erie, Pennsylvania. So we engage in the building of ships, barges, articulated tug barge vessels, hopper barges. We even do heavy fab even outside the maritime industry.
We are 44 acre facility with 250,000 square foot of inside production space. Our winter repair season is really our bread and butter. That's when we work on a lot of Lakers freight vessels on the Great Lakes when the locks close and they have to lay up for the winter. They get a lot of winter repair inspection done, things like that.
Matt Hockman:
Awesome. You all cover a lot of bases there. I'm sure everything stays pretty interesting most of the time.
Jason Reynolds:
It does. Indeed, it does.
Mike Jernigan:
So I know you guys are involved in a program, OSHA SHARP. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Jason Reynolds:
Yeah, absolutely. So to start, SHARP stands for Safety, Health and Achievement Recognition Program. So it is actually a program that allows OSHA to recognize employers that they think are a example in the industry health and safety-wise.
Matt Hockman:
What are some key benefits that organizations can gain from working and going through the OSHA SHARP program?
Jason Reynolds:
So some of the benefits, one of the things it does, it takes you off of OSHA Enforcement's list for programmed inspections, which are for people that don't know the inspections where they just are random. OSHA will pop up and say, "Hey, we haven't been here in a while. Show us around," kind of thing. That does take you off of that list.
You will not undergo any of those, which is to me a huge benefit, because the idea is you're already working with OSHA directly through your compliance assistance office, but then enforcement will not do those program inspections. Another one, I think it's a huge morale booster for your employees. I think that it's something they can be proud of. It's something attainable for once with safety they can hold onto and be proud to achieve.
Some of the other indirect benefits, I know our customers like to see it. I know a lot of us, we actually include the OSHA SHARP designation and our email signatures. I think it goes across well that you're possibly going to work with somebody that has a top-level safety program.
Matt Hockman:
Absolutely. And it visibly shows your commitment to safety, which a commitment to safety is something that's never underestimated by any customer.
Jason Reynolds:
No, especially now.
Matt Hockman:
Yeah, no, it's a valuable piece. So what are some of the eligibility criteria for organizations if they're considering going through the OSHA SHARP program?
Jason Reynolds:
Sure. So to start, SHARP is designed for your small to medium-sized employers, which I believe caps out at 200 employees. So anything between 10 and 200. You do have to maintain your total recordable injury rate below the industry average for start. And then you do have to open yourself up to a full health and safety visit. It's quite the event, and they do break it up into two separate visits.
They will send somebody from the health side and somebody from the safety side. Anything they find, you do have to correct, not unlike the AEU loss control visits. So it is very synergistic with what AEU does with the loss control visits. And actually I found it very valuable to already have been doing those. So we were well primed to get into SHARP. I was actually invited to get into SHARP.
Matt Hockman:
That's amazing. That's something that you wouldn't think would happen, but it also shows that a partnership in the right direction is something that we can achieve and go through. So once an organization achieves the SHARP status, how is it recognized by OSHA and what ongoing responsibilities does the organization have to maintain?
Jason Reynolds:
Once you are in the SHARP program, you do have to work the goals that you set as part of achieving that recognition, and you work those over the three-year period that you're in SHARP. You do have to maintain your total recordable injury rate below industry average. So basically you have to do all the things that you had to do to get into SHARP to maintain that.
Matt Hockman:
So what would be an example of some of the goals that you may have?
Jason Reynolds:
One of the goals, for example, that we had set for this past year was, actually a simple one, was to get some AEDs and get some training and get those operational. We did have some in the way past and we just let that program lapse, but we're going to bring that back.
Matt Hockman:
I'm sure some of the goals are simple and some are more thorough and take a lot of time to achieve, which is great. I mean, you want them to be thorough, but at the same time, some goals may be just as simple as putting some pieces of equipment that can help somebody.
Jason Reynolds:
Right. That's right. Yeah, that's exactly it.
Mike Jernigan:
You mentioned earlier about it's something that the employees really can take pride in. Can you talk a little bit about what it takes to get the buy-in from those employees?
Jason Reynolds:
Yeah, so I think it's really important. That's a great question. I think it's really important to impress upon the employees that they earned it. I think health and safety individuals like myself, we steer the bus a little bit, so to speak, but it's all the employees. What I tell them, "It's your program. So you take pride in that and make it what you want it to be."
I think it has to do with that servitude leadership mentality. I think really making sure you get the guys to buy into it. It's something obtainable that they can achieve. They can understand it. They know what it does and what it doesn't do, versus just saying, "Hey, you did a great job. We don't have any injuries."
Matt Hockman:
So then they have a piece of pride that they can carry with them day to day, and it probably keeps it at the forefront of their mind as well.
Jason Reynolds:
It does. And OSHA sends you a flag as well. So we hang that in our lobby, our SHARP flag.
Mike Jernigan:
I was going to ask another question. I know that it's a big deal to the employees and the workers there, the boots on the ground. Can you talk a little bit about the leadership and their buy-in?
Jason Reynolds:
Yeah, so they were involved every step of the way. I think that's important too. Again, like you said, I think it's hard for the guys, the hourly employees at the floor level, to believe that you're serious about safety if they don't see your top level managers showing that. I think they just think, okay, yeah, we're doing the dance, but are we really serious about this?
And I think our general manager, even our owner, right on down through our general manager, all our production staff is very... They show a lot of pride in the program, and I think that shows through. They support the program in any way, whether it's a cost or whether it's time to have a safety meeting. For instance, we also have a state certified safety committee as well, and they allow us time to meet every month.
Matt Hockman:
To me, as a safety professional as well, it's so good to see that commitment from the top down. I think sometimes we focus on just getting the job done, getting it done safely, but we don't understand what it takes and creating that culture from the CEO all the way down to just the laborer who's maybe cleaning up the shop for the day. If they see that commitment from the top down, it goes with everybody.
Mike Jernigan:
That's so true. So we talk about the program and the employees and leadership. Can you maybe share a little bit about what a day looks like for you and what it is exactly the touch points that you have throughout the day with your employees?
Jason Reynolds:
Yeah, another great question. I think it is important to get out on the floor. So obviously all of us have our day-to-day, answering emails and getting reports done, things like that. But I definitely make it a point to get out on the floor and check in with guys, see what they're working on, how they're working on it. I think to put it into some kind of a term, basically it deals in servitude leadership.
And I think I position myself as what I call a resource rather than a police force. And I think that's so important to get the guys to accept you as that. It's not easy. Because yes, you do have to act in some policing capacity, but I think to have them understand that what you're looking to do is not stop their work, but to help them continue to do it safely and more safe.
So through those conversations, they begin to understand, hey, obviously he doesn't want to stop my work. He wants to show me the safest way I can continue it. A big part of my day is actually making contact with the guys on the floor, looking at the job sites and having some of those conversations both with the production guys on the floor and their supervisors so that I can try to basically support a culture that is very open and where we're viewed as a resource.
Matt Hockman:
It's the same way that we view things from an AEU loss control perspective. We always focus on fact-finding not fault-finding. As soon as you start finding faults in somebody's work, that's when they shut down and you're not going to get the best out of that employee. So I think finding the facts and teaching them why we need to change what we're doing and how we're doing it, I think what you're saying goes perfectly hand-in-hand with that approach.
Jason Reynolds:
Yeah, I agree. And it's so important. So I'm glad that AEU recognizes that, and I know our loss control manager, Jason Lake, does. It works very well.
Mike Jernigan:
Can you maybe talk about a time where you did have to do a little bit of that policing and maybe describe how you might handle some of those situations because I know that it must take finesse? And you guys talk about it, it's not fault-finding, it's fact finding. What does that look like?
Jason Reynolds:
Yeah, another great question. What I found right away is there's a lot of human factors. So I think to answer that question, it even depends on who it is that you're addressing. What I've found is different employees respond to different things. So one example that I can think of is saw a guy that was working from heights, had a harness on, a fall protection lanyard.
He was using an anchor point, but the anchor point was a little low. So when you looked at it, the fall distance assessment really probably wasn't made. So I said, "Hey, look." I always like to start off by recognizing the good things they're doing because we want to keep those.
I said, "Hey, look, I see you got your harness on. You're clipped in. You're using an anchor. Good anchor, except for the fact it's a little low. What we want to do is let's stop. Let's move. Let's select a higher anchor. And if you don't have one, let's get one up there. And then clip into that because you're really close. And I really appreciate the effort, but your anchor is just a little low, and probably the deck is going to stop your fall before the lanyard."
Matt Hockman:
So much of it's in the delivery. It's not necessarily what you're telling them, it's how you deliver the news and how you get them to change their thought process. Because you don't know what somebody doesn't know or doesn't recognize. It's not that they're intentionally doing it wrong every time. There are circumstances when there's bad habits that are continuously having. But at the end of the day, most of the time, it's an honest mistake, I would say, in the field.
Jason Reynolds:
Yeah, I agree. And so right away, I always take up the stance of taking ownership of it, meaning if I see that, then I'm going to automatically assume that the guy's not properly trained. He might've been instructed, but I can't say he's been trained unless there's feedback. And the feedback he's giving me is that he doesn't understand a fall distance assessment, for instance.
So I'm going to take ownership of that, and I'm going to tell him that way. I'm going to say, "Hey, look, yeah, I see you got the harness on. You're getting it. But one thing is maybe I wasn't clear enough. Do the trainings that we've done that, hey, you got to move that anchor up." Now, usually they're like, "No, no, I remember. I just forgot." But again, it's in the delivery because you're taking some ownership in that with them.
Mike Jernigan:
Yes. And being diligent about those things is how you guys landed that OSHA SHARP designation, right?
Jason Reynolds:
That's right.
Mike Jernigan:
So for organizations that are looking to obtain an OSHA SHARP designation, what tips do you have for them? How would you tell them to prepare for that?
Jason Reynolds:
It happened very naturally for us. But with that said, I learned a lot through that. What we did was we actually, which I would encourage other employers to do, is to find your local OSHA compliance assistance office. Usually it's a university in your area, but you can call OSHA. You can go on the website. And that's actually where we started as a lead up to this. So basically doing those OSHA Compliance Assistance visits, which are very similar to SHARP in the way that they're doing the full health and safety comprehensive inspections.
They're identifying with hazards, and you do have to fix them. But as long as you fix them, they don't turn that over to OSHA Enforcement. Alongside of that, we're lucky enough to have partnered with AEU, so we get the loss control visits. So between those two things, I mean, we're going through everything once a year like that. So we did the OSHA Compliance Assistance for three years.
And it doesn't mean you have to, but we took advantage of that program for three years. And then our OSHA Compliance Assistance Office, which in Pennsylvania is the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, they actually said, "Hey, have you ever heard of the SHARP program?" No, what's that? So they explained it to me. This is about five years ago now. They explained it to me and I said, "Yeah, sure. Sounds like a good thing to me. Where do we start"?
And they said, "Well, that's the thing, you kind of already did. I mean, you'll probably be a good candidate for it because we keep coming here and we're not really finding much. And I'm looking at your total recordable incident rate and it's below industry average." Okay, well, sign us up. And then from there, I mean, obviously there was more that had to be done, a lot of paperwork, things like that, had to touch base with our management team, make sure that was something they were interested in, which, of course, they were.
They bought right into it. But that's definitely where we started. I would say I don't even know that that's necessary with AEU because I find a high value just with the loss control visits. So I think a lot of employers that do have AEU for their loss control manager probably are already being well-primed to apply for SHARP.
Matt Hockman:
So it goes hand in hand.
Jason Reynolds:
It goes hand in hand. It's very synergistic. There's no doubt.
Matt Hockman:
That's awesome.
Mike Jernigan:
Yeah, that's what I was going to say. We're talking about it. And throughout this conversation, the one thing that... The connection between you and your employees, the connection between the University of Pennsylvania, AEU, Donjon, I mean, all these things are people working together to really push these goals forward and to keep people safe. I mean, the value in that, you can't put a price on it.
Jason Reynolds:
Right. Well said. It's a very cool thing to have that many people on that many levels all working the same goal like that.
Matt Hockman:
And it's going to save you money over the long run in lots of different aspects. You're not having to find new employees because employees are getting hurt. You're not having to pay exorbitant amounts of insurance costs. It all adds up to the same goal of saving money, keeping people safe at the end of the day, and making sure that they go home better than they came in.
Jason Reynolds:
Yeah, absolutely.
Mike Jernigan:
Go ahead, Matt.
Matt Hockman:
So if you were going to give one piece of safety advice to your younger self, what would that be?
Jason Reynolds:
So two things stick out for me actually. What I learned, it took a little while, but to make sure you're balancing your time with your employees, not necessarily giving so much time to the employees that aren't doing the right thing, because what's happening is you're... I found myself right away. You start to alienate the employees that are. And so what happens is you start to have this erosion effect.
You keep working with these people that may or may not eventually become what I call actively engaged. Meanwhile, you had employees that are actively engaged and you're not supporting that. So they begin to step down into engaged or what I call disengaged. And so you find yourself spinning wheels. So I think one of the things I would tell my younger self is, hey, look, make sure you're giving just as much time, if not more, to the employees that are doing the right thing.
Because what I found was that's a bit of a force multiplier. Because once you have those guys that are doing the right thing and you can get them to keep doing the right thing, that rubs off on their fellow employees. They give you some help.
Matt Hockman:
That's an incredible piece of safety advice and something I wish I would've known a lot longer as well.
Jason Reynolds:
I wish it didn't take me this long.
Matt Hockman:
But that's the thing is safety is always an educational experience. You're going to be learning every time you're stepping up to the plate. Day to day it changes. So we just have to continuously keep our eye on the ball and focus on the right things.
Mike Jernigan:
Every job has a unique set of safety challenges that requires a unique set of safety skills, right?
Jason Reynolds:
That's right. Absolutely. As many tools as you can get in your toolbox, the better.
Mike Jernigan:
Absolutely. Well, Jason, Matt, it's been a pleasure to speak with you guys about safety and learn about how you guys push that ball forward every day. So I thank you for joining us for the Longshore Insider Podcast.
Jason Reynolds:
Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
Matt Hockman:
Thank you, Mike.
