In this Longshore Insider Podcast, AEU's Mike Jernigan and Matt Hockman speak with Mare Island Dry Dock's Executive Compliance Director, Ken Creel, about his strategies for engaging supervisors and creating safety leadership within his organization.
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, we're focusing on safety. Specifically, we're speaking with health and safety experts from across the maritime industry to find out what they do to develop and cultivate a culture of safety among their teams and throughout their organizations. I'm Mike Jernigan with the American Equity Underwriters. Joining me today is loss control manager, Matt Hockman, who is here to provide his perspective on AEU's approach to safety. And Ken Creel, Executive Compliance Director for Mare Island Dry Dock. Matt, Ken, it's a pleasure to have you guys with me today.
Matt Hockman:
Thanks for having us.
Mike Jernigan:
Absolutely. So Ken, let's start by you telling us a little bit about yourself and your background.
Ken Creel:
Well, for the company that I'm with now, I've been working there for about three years. As far as my previous employer, I worked for 32 years. I think one of the advantages that I have in looking at the industry because the industry's getting smaller and smaller and one of the things that I can bring to the table is we talk about how things were used to be done. I know how they used to be done and how we can make changes within the work environments to create those changes and establish those goals.
Mike Jernigan:
Specifically, one of the things that I want to speak with you about today is engaging supervisors, because I think getting supervisors on board is mandatory, right? You're not going to get anybody else on board unless you've got your supervisor leading the way.
Ken Creel:
Exactly.
Mike Jernigan:
So can you tell me a little bit specifically about how you get supervisors to buy in to safety?
Ken Creel:
Well, I think the biggest thing is when we take and look at supervisors and expectations is to understand the position that we put them in. Because to me, the hardest job in the world is, yeah, we go down to double bottoms and we take and do tank cleaning. Guys get up underneath boilers, tight areas, confined and restricted spaces to work. Yeah, those are hard and challenging. But as far as supervisors, they get it from every angle. You have the safety guys that go out there and say you have to be safety. But as an overall, we don't set them up for success. I mean, we have all the other indirect things that are out there, manpower, skilled, and then do we really establish milestones and goals and schedules that they can achieve? Because what'll happen is that if a supervisor doesn't have the tools to do their job, they're going to improvise.
If they don't have the material, they're going to do the best they can with what they got. And for me, when we take look at that, if we provide them the best they can with what they got, they're going to fail. And then when it comes to safety, what do you think the first thing they're going to do to cut corners on is safety. Because they have all these outlying things that they have to worry about and look at and overcome. So I think what it's fair to do is we talk about the safety culture and safety first and all this, but really build safety as that foundation to where when you're looking at schedules, how many of us incorporate lockout tag on our schedules, create those milestones, stop points and gaps like that?
Matt Hockman:
So what I hear is it's kind of creating that culture of safety. It's not just giving them certain tools and expecting them to understand, you got to foster that culture. It's something that takes time and energy and making sure that you're focused in the right direction. How do you foster a culture of safety leadership among supervisors in maritime operations and what role does ongoing training and development play?
Ken Creel:
I think when we look at ongoing roles and training everything else, I mean, we can talk about leading indicators, lagging indicators. One of the things that you have to do as far as supervisors, they have to know policies and procedures. You have to give them the one that always the authorization to stop work. But really when we look at training, do we give them the training to where they're able to identify those hazards because we become a project of our environment and we have those supervisors who normally who's the supervisor, the most experienced person, and that's what we have to do is we have to bring them back so they can identify those hazards and not overlook them because it becomes part of the process or the culture.
Matt Hockman:
So what kind of challenges have you had when engaging supervisors?
Ken Creel:
I think the biggest challenges in just looking at companies as a whole on how they take a look at safety is we talk about a lot with incentive programs and everything else, but I think what we need to do is get back down to the foundation. Because when we talk about safety as far as being a core value, we need to get into the nuts and bolts on how do we just evaluate our employees? We take a look at employees, if you go to any policy or HR, they got a handbook on tardiness, job performance, but do we really establish a baseline or we take a look at safety and do a true evaluation of it? Or is it just where it's a box of one to five, is this person safe or not safe, but incorporate that into their annual evaluations, merit increases and some people are going to cringe a little bit.
But when it comes to bonuses, because if you don't have operations involved with the process, that's the shortcomings of the supervisor. It just trickles down and we talk about from the top to the bottom, but we really need to look forward from that perspective. From the top to the bottom, we're in the maritime industry, you go to any ship, who's in control of that ship? The captain. Well, if you get into ship repair, who has control of that vessel? The program manager, operations. So I think that's more of a perspective where we need to look at is how do we provide them with the tools and the training to answer the first part of your question, give them the tools so that they can identify the hazards. But it's all the indirect things is what we really need to look at.
Mike Jernigan:
You actually answered the next question. I was going to ask you about incentives. And you spoke about those incentives and how those help the employees buy in. Can you tell me a little bit about how the employees receive those and the difference that you see that it has made in them adopting that safety first mentality?
Ken Creel:
I think we look at incentives. It goes along with you have to foster pride in the company. And when we take in, look at safety programs and the safety first, and we all went to the barbecues and the wards and everything else, are you really looking at changing the culture by taking the safety perspective to where I did a safety act and I took and got a prize? Or are you looking at building the pride and ownership within the company? And I think that's the key element of it. Should we talk about safety and everything else? But really we got to bring that pride back. For me, I took and talked about, I worked for the company prior to where I was at now for 30 years, we don't have that anymore. What am I going to do tomorrow? I'm going to work somewhere else. We got to foster in that culture where we have pride in ownership within the companies too.
Matt Hockman:
And the more you foster that culture, the more people want to stay. It's especially with this new generation, I think a lot of the new generation is focused on what are you doing to improve everything around me? It's not just improving the workforce, it's improving my job.
Ken Creel:
And that's what's key about this generation because we talk about the now or the reward now when we take a look at training and we're trying to promote them to speak up and bring up, what do we call them, near misses or safety observations, everything. But I think the biggest thing where we lose that momentum is getting the information back. One, providing them with a solution and then following up with an enacting on it. Because with that immediate gratification, they need that immediate response. And I think that's where we're lagging at.
Matt Hockman:
No, I completely agree. So what kind of metrics or indicators do you use to assess the effectiveness of supervisor involvement in safety initiatives?
Ken Creel:
The reason why I pause on that is because what we need to first establish, because we're talking about supervisors, do we provide the supervisor with the resources need to do their jobs? What we have to also look at is are we providing the safety departments or the safety managers with those same resources? I'm a fan of take the benefit of what you're already doing. We can look at companies and I'm sure everybody has them to where you're doing daily safety inspections, you're doing monthly shop inspections, employees are required to fill out JHAs and stuff like that. We need to do is take the time to review those, identify gaps and use that as a leading indicator of what's happening.
Matt Hockman:
So this is a question I ask everybody and I think it's an important one. So what is one piece of safety advice that you would give your younger self?
Ken Creel:
It's funny, the first thing when you said that, what I was thinking about is that commercial that is out right now where it talks about making financial investments and liking your old self. And I think it's just the double side of it. When we look at injuries, and I think what people really need to understand is if I get hurt today, is it just going to affect me for today? Is it just going to affect me for the week or the month or is it going to affect me for my lifetime? We need to get to a point within society that getting hurt and being broken when you're old is acceptable. And I think the biggest thing is we all have that older, more seasoned professional working right next to us. Think about it is when you get to their age, you want to be in that same condition. If you could act the way they did, the body mechanics and everything else that is looking forward.
Mike Jernigan:
You bring up a great point. And one of the things that I hear about this industry is that we need workers. It's hard to get workers. I think everyone I speak with seems to have the same issue. They need that workforce. And so you've got a lot of younger people who are coming into this field and you make a great point. You look at the guy next to him who may be of the older generation, the old school way of thinking, and really it's important to get the older workers to buy in too because they can lead by example. And that's what this conversation is really all about. Can you maybe walk us through a conversation that you may have had with an older employee who you had to sort of say, "Hey, listen, I'd prefer you do it this way or that way, or maybe this is why it's important?"
Ken Creel:
I think I take it one step further because most of the time you take in see somebody or you talk to them from any generation. If you ask them the question, some look at it as frustration, I think of as kind of ironic. They know the answer. So what I try to do is talk to them. But when you're talking about with the older employees, with newer employees coming in or just supervisors, I remember there was a time when we talked about mentoring, but I just take it down to a notch on a level to where you're looking to help them to promote their well-being. And that's the more of a perspective where I take it bringing it down to you want to be a teacher.
Matt Hockman:
And once they understand that, they embrace it a little more.
Ken Creel:
Yeah.
Mike Jernigan:
That's exactly what I was going to say. And I think we mentioned that it's fact-finding, not fault-finding. And I think that that really goes a long way. Not pointing a finger at somebody but providing words of encouragement.
Ken Creel:
Well, to take it a notch up, it's not only that is it's easy to point out a deficiency or non-conformance, but with the key is with anybody, you have to provide them with a solution. Because like I said earlier, if they're doing the best they can with the tools that they have and you don't do anything to influence or change that or provide them with other tools, you are not going to have change.
Matt Hockman:
And to me, another key is telling them when they're doing a good job too. It's not just coming at them and saying, "You need to work on this. You did this great, thank you for doing that way and just kind of embracing that." To me, that's a culture, that's a safety culture.
Ken Creel:
Well, yeah, that's the key component of bringing them in and talking and working with them to where they can be more proactive and they get some pride out of it also.
Mike Jernigan:
In the name of taking it a step further, like we've mentioned, we talk about getting those supervisors on board, but really what comes first is getting the leadership on board, right? Have you ever had any conversations with leadership, and this goes back almost to what you were saying about providing incentives to these employees, right? How do you get leadership to buy into these incentives to really help you help them understand the importance of safety?
Ken Creel:
I would like to think you could just walk up and talk to them and say it's a good ideal, but you have to look at the overs and unders on how to get them really directly involved. With supervisors we've taken a look at ownership because we have to instill with supervisors. And the key there is that they're responsible for their employees. And when an employee gets hurt, it's not the employee that got hurt, it's you're the one that was providing direction and not so much for blame, but my perspective is if you don't do everything you can to prevent somebody from getting injured, and this goes all the way up and down this [inaudible 00:15:37] is we allow it to happen. And what we need to stop doing is allowing those things to happen as far as once you get higher up the management chain, it should be a direct reflection of their performance.
Mike Jernigan:
I think that's a great message because these safety incidents don't happen to just the person, they happen to the organization and it's a reflection of the organization. And specifically, if you have a severe injury, you need to be cognizant that that happened on your organization's watch.
Ken Creel:
Well, not only the organization but the family, the children. We used to think that we got hurt, we could go watch TV for a couple weeks and life was good and everything else, but we don't think about the redirects to where the family, the kids, providing that foundation for your home. And it affects you when you go home too and life impact.
Mike Jernigan:
And it all comes back around to accountability and responsibility. And so the supervisors need to be responsible and accountable and the leadership of the organization needs to be responsible and accountable as well. And I think if everybody takes that ownership and is responsible and they're accountable to what they're doing every day, it makes the process of safety so much more natural. It doesn't become something that you have to think about, something that you have to dwell on. It just becomes a natural part of your mentality and what you do.
Ken Creel:
Yeah, safety is something you do also is what you do.
Mike Jernigan:
I love that and I think that's a great place to end the conversation for today. So, guys, I appreciate you both being here, and I thank you very much for this conversation.
Matt Hockman:
Thanks for having us.