In this installment of EHSDA Shorts, Jeramy Hurt, CSP, ASP, Director of EHS Solutions of Ideagen, Camille Oakes, CSP, MEng, SMS, President and CEO of Better Safety, and Meagan Garrett, Director of Engineering – Regulatory and Government Affairs of Climate Control Group, talk about generational attitudes toward safety.
This clip was taken from a webinar titled “Panel Discussion: Leading the Way to Support a Diverse Workforce,” hosted by EHSDA Editor-in-Chief Jay Kumar as part of the EHS Daily Advisor NOW: Leadership online summit. The full session is available for FREE on-demand here.
The webinar was sponsored by Ideagen.
Transcript (edited for clarity):
Question: What are the generational attitudes toward safety?
Hurt: I feel like a lot of our older generation, you get some of this, “We’ve always done it this way.” But I think too, as we kind of trying to mesh these two groups together, should also give some training on how to accept feedback and how to give feedback. I loved Camille’s point, where it should be circular. It’s not mentor-mentee. It is both, kind of that communication and that knowledge could go both ways. So, having that and being able to have the two groups have an engaging conversation because you might have folks coming in that are not going to tolerate the risks that maybe an older generation has tolerated. You might have a younger generation that doesn’t recognize the risk because they haven’t been exposed to some of those. So I think there’s a really solid give and take if you can create that kind of circular relationship that we talk about.
Kumar: Camille, what are your thoughts on those attitudes?
Oakes: Well, again, we have to look at an individual and not a generation because there’s going to be regional differences, there’s going to be cultural differences. I will say that Gallup polls and things like that all come in and say that the younger generations have less tolerance for a lack of safety. They have less tolerance for, I’ll say it like they would, “when the vibes are off.” And you know, that’s been kind of my experience. I spend a lot of my time with people who do safety for a living. And the ones that are younger are way more comfortable with the idea that our jobs include psychological safety, mental health and well-being. They include taking care of the person overall. And then I will speak to older generation safety professionals and I’m absolutely stereotyping. And their response is usually like, “Well, what does that have to do with me?” You know, that safety is “I get rid of the trip hazard” and not, “I hug you when you’re feeling sad.” And that’s what they’re seeing both of these as. And it’s kind of somewhere in the middle where it is our job and we do have ownership of it. And it’s both, in my opinion, but I am in the middle generation.
Kumar: Megan, what do you think?
Garrett: When I first got into this industry, I got hired with a very large chemical company and as EHS professional. People were getting fired when they got hurt 15 years ago. If you got hurt at work, you were terminated. It was immediately your fault. I think that has changed, whether it’s a generational change, whether it’s the improvement of felt leadership, whether it’s the HOP principles. I’m a big fan of HOP, human organizational performance. Chances are it’s not the person. Once you do a proper root cause, you’re going to be able to get it down. You’re going to be able to study that event. I never like to leave something at lack of training, pet peeve of mine, but you normally can work it all the way down to figure out what’s the real problem here. And I think that’s what shifted and that’s what’s changed in the safety culture within generations. It’s not necessarily the tolerance, but it’s the emotional intelligence of handling an investigation. You’re no longer faulted for a lack of a lockout/tagout procedure and a guy gets his hand cut off and now he’s lost a job. So not only is he injured, he was fired for not following a rule. You have more protections now as a worker, you have a better chance at understanding what’s needed to be done, how it’s needed to be done, and what processes are there to support you. Whether it’s through an accident investigation, training on your job, or actually understanding your safety at your workplace.