Navigating Safety Management in a Shifting Economy

Navigating Safety Management in a Shifting Economy
[00:00:00] I feel like there's an elephant in the room that we need to talk about. It's something that's probably weighing heavily on your heart right now, and you likely don't want to think about it. I know that I would love to ignore the whole situation and just wait it out while I continue to chant to myself.
It will all be okay. It will all be okay,
but from my experience, people who do that end up losing in the end, and I don't want that happening to you. So let's talk about the current economic climate and how it is affecting you and your career. [00:01:00]
Hello, hello, hello. Happy Memorial Day. At least that is the plan for when this episode comes out, but we are kicking off summer. Are you guys as excited as me? I am a warm weather girl and here in Florida we had a killer winter by our standards.
So I am bracing for a brutal summer, but you won't hear any complaints from me because I would much rather be in a hundred degrees than 30 degrees. Seriously? How do people up north end up standing this cold weather? It was craziness. Like we had days where. Days on end, it was two or three days in a row where it was in the high twenties, the low thirties.
And I was like, no thank you. No, no, no, no, no. Kudos to you , that love the north, but not for me. But we are glad that it is [00:02:00] summertime here in Florida. Now, onto our topic today, what I wanna chat about is the economy,
I really wanted to talk about it, but I felt like I have talked about this several times before. So I went back into my archives and sure enough, just a few episodes ago, I talked about bulletproofing your safety career. Now I say it was a recent episode, but in the scheme of things, because I took 16 months off, it was nearly two years ago, so I get that.
I'm not gonna sit here and replay or re-edit that episode for you, but I will link to it in the show notes. So today what I wanna discuss is how the current situation could be affecting you, and then some actions that you can take over and above what's already mentioned.
Episode. So I highly recommend that you go back and re-listen to that episode. 'cause that gives you six steps as well. My biggest concern is that [00:03:00] history has shown us that when business gets tough and cuts need to be made, safety could be one of the first to go. And business is very tough right now due to tariffs and just like the ripple effect. Through that economy. And it is not just higher prices, but that is part of it.
Small businesses, they are the lifeblood of our economy and what happens to them can affect your job even if you are working for a large organization, because when their supplies are tariffed and they can't afford those tariffs, they don't make as many widgets, right? Like maybe they're gonna cut back on production and that results in less hours for employees and that.
Also means less need for other services like delivering or packaging or maintenance or office staff, right? And then those businesses, those supplementary businesses, they see a reduction in sales. So then they start cutting as well as other businesses like [00:04:00] due to loss of wages because employees aren't working as much.
So maybe they're not buying lunch out as much, or they're not buying as many things. And the ripple goes on and on on top of that, businesses can't move forward in the current situation because the situation keeps changing. I mean, just last week it was 145% tariffs, and this week I think it's 30% I don't even know anymore.
And like I have a friend who is a CFO and she's just got her hands up in the air. She's like, I don't even know how to price our products, because things are just changing so often. And here I have to make sure that we're making a profit. So these companies are now looking like, why should we even make changes?
Why should we change our supply chain or anything? Because everything is changing. So six months from now, it may be different, and then our new suppliers might not be as good. I've even seen this in my daughter's business. Like she orders charms. She creates the artwork, but she has a supplier. I'm not sure if it's [00:05:00] China or if it is in another country it might be Hong Kong or something, but.
That supplier is really, really good. So I'm like, well, are you gonna pay those tariffs? And she's like, I have to because the other suppliers are more expensive and the quality isn't as good. So it kind of makes them get stuck, right? So it's easy for us to see or predict how this is going to affect safety and.
It's easy for us to wanna contract, right? It's easy for us to just go I don't wanna look at any of it. It's just a mess right now and I can't control it, so I'm just gonna stop and contract and just wait it out. I feel myself wanting to do this as well. So what ends up happening? You know, like we might stop our own spending or we might stop, you know, we might start saving in the if in.
So what we might do as a reaction is we stop our own spending and start saving in case the worst happens, right? Meaning like you get laid off. And at work we tend to not wanna ruffle any feathers. We don't wanna upset anybody and we don't bring things up that we know. [00:06:00] May fire them. I don't know if you've ever heard my story of my first aid kits, but that was like an example of that.
Like he was spending the day firing everybody. So when he came to me, I normally pushed back, but I was like, Nope, whatever you want, we'll do it because I didn't wanna get fired that day. Or we might let stuff go because we're like, it's hard on everybody right now and I don't wanna make it harder on them.
And plans that you may have had for the future. Are put on hold. Like maybe you had improvement projects or you had like initiatives that you were gonna work on, but now your company has had to put them on hold. So I wanna discuss today how we can be more proactive in these trying times. And definitely listen to that episode on Bulletproofing, your Safety Career.
'cause that gives you six tips. But I do have a few tips that I want you to consider to strengthen your current position, so that way should your company be making cuts, they're not gonna be looking your [00:07:00] way. So number one. Is invest in your education. I hear the argument so many times like I don't think my boss will approve this, or My boss won't pay for it.
Your boss is not supposed to pay for your continuing education. It's nice when they do, it is a benefit. That's why it's listed as benefits, but. You really need to be responsible for your own education and for one, education is not being tariffed right now. So definitely invest in your education and it's something that once you've gained it, you can't lose it and it just continues to pay you back.
So I know like when things are tough for me, I'm generally looking at what skills? Do I need to gain? Right? And how can I learn it quickly? So I know I'm biased because I've run a safety education company, but this is true for everything that I'm saying. So now is not the time to put your education off for later, because [00:08:00] later you may find yourself in a tougher situation where it's even harder to find the time or the resources to invest in that education.
So what I want you to do is do an analysis on yourself. List out the skills that you may be lacking.
So look at the current job market and what eligibility requirements they're looking for in the work for safety and look in your geographic area of what is being hired in your area and what eligibility requirements they're looking for and what you are missing.
And then look at your current management team and what skills do they have that you don't. Those are skills you need to beef up on. And then have a conversation with your HR department, if they're HR department of any worth, you can sit down with them and say these are the things I'm concerned about.
What skills do you see I'm lacking? What do you see that I need to be paying more attention to [00:09:00] or doing? And you can come up with a list of things that you need to learn, and then you're gonna go out and find short term courses or seminars. That can help you fill that gap. Now, long-term things like college like that's okay, but it's better to beef up your skills quickly.
And courses, like online courses are a great way to do that. To me they are the best way because it lets you learn at your own pace, where if you went to a live course or seminar. You're learning that just that one time and then you're depending upon your notes afterwards. So a lot of times when I take online courses, I can repeat the lessons over and over again as I'm learning that skill.
So a great example of this is I got my postgraduate degree in project management and it was done over a six to eight week period. Through an online course, so even though the [00:10:00] course was delivered over six to eight weeks, and it was sponsored by the University of Massachusetts, like I attended classes that were delivered by the professors, there were also recorded sessions and projects I had to do, and I had up to a year to complete the course, but it was delivered where I could complete it in six to eight weeks.
And then you have, you know, your skills in project management. So look for things like that. So number one is invest in your education. Find those gaps, and fill those gaps quickly. Alright, so number two, I want you to proactively assist. Other areas in your organization. Now, I've talked about this a lot, about not staying in your lane and learning all the other areas of your organization, but now what I want you to do is like if a department that you know is shorthanded, can you spare 30 minutes a day and offer to help them out?
And if you could take on recurring [00:11:00] responsibilities of other departments that are not necessarily safety related. Such things might be like accounting or purchasing or sales or hr, things like that. Or even maintenance, like the admin tasks for the maintenance department, something like that where they usually have like clerical tasks that are actually meaningful that do need to be done, but they're short staffed.
It's really hard for them to get to it. And if you start taking on those tasks and say, Hey. Right now I have some spare time. Let me help you. Can I help you do this? You then become an asset to the organization, and then you're shown as a team player, but on top of that, it makes it hard to cut your position because now you're not just doing safety, you're also helping out like one or two other departments, so they're not having to.
You know, give just safety responsibilities to somebody else. They now have to give all these other responsibilities to somebody else. You get me there. Like you're making yourself [00:12:00] a more valuable employee, not just through safety. And this worked for me way back in 2008. During the recession, I took on accounting responsibilities and then.
I made it through the recession because I was actually spending five hours a week working on accounting responsibilities that had nothing to do with safety. It was like credits or something like that. But I did those tasks and then when business started to pick up I actually then went to them and said, I can't do this anymore.
'cause business is picking up and my safety responsibilities are now. Greater.
And a side note on this is that safety responsibilities. Don't necessarily decrease equally with the work. So as their business slows down, your safety responsibilities don't slow down. At the same degree, they slow down a little, but the amount of hours to an effective safety management [00:13:00] program remain relatively high.
So you need to express that when you're helping them out, that you're actually letting things wait in your own department or you're putting things on hold on your own department, that you're prioritizing their needs over yours Now.
When things get back to normal. If you've done this right, it's very easy to flip it back, to be like, okay, I can no longer do these added tasks, because things have now gotten back to normal you stepped up during the crisis. But now that the crisis is over, they need to hire somebody to do these tasks.
Alright, so number four is something I talk about a lot, regardless of if we are in a crazy economic situation, but that is demonstrating the value you provide and I think that this is inside of that Bulletproofing episode, so I'm not gonna dive into it too deeply. But you need to understand the business acumen.
You need to understand, How that business makes money, how they measure success, and how to connect your [00:14:00] words to their goals. So learn to speak in the terms of return on investments and go. Beyond just accidents, incidents, and insurance rates, and really build up your operational expertise. So if you've ever attended my stuff where I have the three pillars of safety influence, you need to build up your operational expertise Now, more than ever, and lastly, now is the time to truly beef up your network, a strong network and connections. Gives you job security so that way if you are laid off, you can immediately reach out to your network and let them know that you're available and if they hear of any positions to let you know. And people are more likely to hire somebody from their network than from a job posting.
If they have a choice between the two, they will choose their network over some random person. A job posting. So make sure that you are [00:15:00] networking all the time and you're building those positive relationships within the safety community. So that means participating in local meetings,
it means volunteering for those organizations. And if there is an opportunity to present, then you want to do that present on something. You know, this helps you build authority within your network so that way, if. The worst happens and then you say, Hey, I'm looking for something. They're gonna know you know what you're talking about and I want you on my team.
And you can also, what I really love everybody to do is create a coffee chat group, reach out to other safety professionals in your geographic area relatively close to where you work, so that way it's convenient and have coffee with them on a regular basis. You may need support from them or. You could be their support, right?
Everybody's going through this hard time and having that strong network will really help you get through [00:16:00] it. So it is crazy that the economy and even politics impact our profession as much as it does, and you would think that people would not wanna cut safety when they're cutting costs. Or even like reverse regulations, that keep people safe.
But unfortunately that is the way our politics go, is that we are ever changing based on the current administration and the current economic climate. You can definitely fight it by voting, but in the two years in between those votes, you really need to start being proactive about your career so that you don't end up the casualty of somebody else's decisions. So close those gaps in your education. Make sure that you're inserting yourself to assist other areas of the business and that you have.
Exceptional operational expertise so that you can demonstrate the value that you [00:17:00] provide. And don't forget to beef up that professional network and you will be better off for it in the long run as well as the short run. I know we will make it through this hard time that it will be better at the end.
So just. Stay strong through it, and I'll see you next time. Bye for now.