Human and Organizational Performance, Plus Electrical Safety

Barry Bottino: Greetings, everybody, and thank you for joining us for On the Safe Side, a monthly podcast hosted by the editors of Safety and Health Magazine, the official magazine of the National Safety Council. My name is Barry Bottino, and I’m an Associate Editor with Safety and Health. With me, as always, are my trusty fellow Associate Editors, Kevin Druley and Alan Ferguson. It’s October, and we’re coming to you with episode number 20. We appreciate you following along, as always.

This month brings the National Safety Council’s annual Congress and Expo, the world’s largest annual safety event. Our team will be in Orlando to safely gather for educational opportunities, impactful speakers, and networking opportunities that we haven’t been able to enjoy for about two years now because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We look forward to seeing some of you October 8th through 14th in Orlando or in our virtual environment. To check out details of that virtual option and to learn more about all the precautions that NSC is taking for those of us going to Orlando to ensure everyone’s safety, please visit us at congress.nsc.org online.

Our sponsor for this month’s episode is Westex, a Milliken brand, and we’ll tell you more about them a little bit later. To keep up with all the latest news from around the safety world, please check out our website at safetyandhealthmagazine.com. We also have a new online home for our sister publication, Family Safety and Health. You can find that at safetyandhealthmagazine.com/family to learn more about safety away from work.

During this month’s episode, we’ll take a deep dive with Alan into his feature story about human and organizational performance, which some of you might know as H-O-P or HOP. That story delves into how as humans we all make mistakes, and how an organization responds to those mistakes is one of the key principles of human and organizational performance. We’ll also discuss electrical safety for all workers in our Five Questions With segment with Brett Brenner, who serves as president of the Electrical Safety Foundation International. And of course, stay tuned for our pop quiz, where we’ll talk about all of our favorite things about fall that don’t begin with those dreaded two words, pumpkin spiced. Now let’s get this episode rolling.

Kevin Druley: Each month here at On the Safe Side, we take an in-depth look at a feature story from the pages of Safety and Health Magazine, which we call our Deep Dive. While this month’s edition may sound like a tribute to 50s pop music, this particular trip to the HOP actually is a conversation with Alan about what that acronym represents: human and organizational performance. HOP is an operational philosophy that features multiple principles. So without any further ado, Alan, we appreciate your expertise on this topic and look forward to hearing more. Whenever you’re ready, could you please take us on this latest deep dive?

Alan Ferguson: Well, thank you, Kevin. I appreciate it. First of all, I want to say that this was one of the more interesting stories I’ve written in my four plus years here at the National Safety Council and Safety and Health Magazine. Human and organizational performance, as we’ve mentioned, also known as H-O-P or HOP, is an operating philosophy. It’s not a program. So people need to keep that in mind. You can’t just get people in a conference room, have awareness training, and that’s that, or roll out a new slogan or things like that. It’s really a way of looking at the world. And that’s why it’s often called the new view.

Most of the time, you’ll see five principles of HOP. NSC uses six. The lists, in my opinion, are slightly redundant in a couple of places, so I’ll try to boil it down to four concepts.

Number one, people make errors, and that’s human. That’s normal. And if you’re expecting that you can train your workers and then they won’t make any errors again, you’ll be sadly mistaken, or tragically in certain cases. From what I was told, some safety philosophies are built around the idea, or the paradigm, that we can train workers to become perfect. And that’s obviously not realistic.

Number two, employers need to understand how work really gets done. It’s important to have procedures and policies to set parameters, but workers rarely follow those to a T. And as I write, each day rarely goes as planned for employees. There’s a quote, I believe, that is attributed to Mike Tyson: everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. And that’s a good way, albeit a coarse one, of illustrating that concept. Employees might have to work around issues such as faulty machinery or subpar software. Workers also might encounter things like time pressure or production deadlines that cause them to take shortcuts. Also, often no two workers do things exactly alike.

So the policies and procedures in this case are often referred to as the black line, and how work really gets done is called the blue line. Organizations need to understand that blue line and what challenges employees are facing. Again, if you’re expecting workers to follow that black line, you’re anticipating problems with that. You’re going to get blindsided when workers are doing something else. Also, sometimes safety pros are in charge of enforcing rules and procedures for something they may not fully understand, and that’s at least part of the reason for the gap between the black and the blue lines.

I would say it this way: you need to meet workers on their level. And NSC states that you also need to understand that you pay your workers to be problem solvers. They’re paid to work through issues they encounter and deviate from course when needed. So don’t necessarily worry that they’re not following everything to the letter in your procedures. Instead, you can do things like finding ways to craft procedures that are more realistic, or figuring out where your systems could be most vulnerable when it comes to the blue line, or mistakes, or shortcuts, et cetera. The process of the latter can begin with a two-way dialogue with workers, and this will lead into the next concept in a second. It needs to be an open dialogue. Bob Edwards, a HOP coach based in Tennessee, said, quote: we can’t implement HOP if leadership is not on board. I mean, we can’t, because the moment we start speaking more openly and honestly, and a leader freaks out on us and starts writing up people, then we’re done. If leadership is not on board with it, then it can actually be quite dangerous to have an open and honest conversation if somebody’s then going to get punished for it.

Three, the responses that workers get from employers, managers, or supervisors, that matters greatly, and blame fixes nothing. If a mistake happens that leads to an incident, organizations need to take time to understand why. Again, workers make errors during the day, and there’s different stats out there about how many per hour per day. I write in the story 4 to 7 errors per hour on average. And many of those errors are unnoticeable by an organization or in real life because there aren’t any consequences.

Often, the organizational response to an error depends on the outcome. If a worker takes a shortcut and helps a company meet a production deadline, he or she might get praised for efficiency. If that same shortcut leads to a destructive result, then he or she will likely get punished. And sometimes there’s also this idea that someone has to pay for a mistake, but often the reasons why it happened are more complex. We’ll get into HOP and accountability in a few minutes. In both of the aforementioned cases, the shortcut was the same, and there’s value in looking at why it happened, even when an incident doesn’t occur.

Now, John Kowalski, owner and president of Safety Performance LLC, said, quote: asking the question, why did it make perfectly good sense for the person to do what they did, creates the potential for strong insights. The second question could be, would three other people with similar training and background take the same shortcut? He continues: the second question helps to determine the culpability of people. Answering these two questions will get you closer to the actual cause. And Andrea Baker, also known as the HOP mentor, said incidents rarely occur because of employee issues, but it’s often because of systems issues.

I’ll give you an example. Lisa Brooks, vice president of member networks for NSC ORC HSE, which is part of the workplace practice area here at the council, said at a former job, her company had several forklift incidents that resulted in minor property damage. And what they found out when they looked at the incidents was that drivers had to perform tasks where they had two inches of clearance on either side. In those situations, she said, even the best are going to ding something eventually. So you have to fix the issue with the two inches of clearance instead of punishing a driver by, say, pulling his or her license, having them go through post-incident drug testing, or making them attend another training class. The latter response doesn’t fix the underlying issue. Instead, organizations need to learn and improve from incidents, near misses, or even something lying in wait beneath the surface. So going back to my second point, employers should try to understand the context in which their employees are working before rushing to discipline.

So concept number four: once you understand why a person might take a certain action in a certain situation, organizations need to start defending against errors. Kowalski calls these hazard mitigation controls. Quote: if I have one good defense in place, I might get the error, but I won’t get the injury and or fatality, or I won’t get the consequential error, the error that causes bad things to happen, he said.

The example that’s often used in HOP is the car. Think about the car in the 1950s. Did it have airbags, lane departure warnings, automatic emergency braking, or other safety measures? No, they didn’t. And why was that all put in? It’s to protect the driver from him or herself. We’re all going to make mistakes or have our attention wander or drift out of a lane. On the other side, a modern day forklift doesn’t have that same level of protection. Baker specifically mentioned a warning system for tip overs. She said the ability to fail, and fail quickly, and fail catastrophically in a forklift is scary. That’s one example of a hundred examples of things where historically we’ve spent more time trying to make drivers better. But she said the same time and energy could be used to build defenses within the machinery and allow the ability to fail safely when there are mistakes, poor judgments, or errors.

So that’s it in a nutshell. In the real world, workers will make mistakes. They sometimes won’t follow your procedures to the letter because of the variables they face. Companies should understand the context in which their workers are operating, and should avoid rushing to blame or judge when incidents happen, and look into how to build defenses against those mistakes.

So, Alan, I’m curious if there are any major obstacles that proponents of HOP are currently facing.

Alan Ferguson: Besides getting management to understand this philosophy and buy into it, remember I mentioned earlier that organizational response matters. One of the biggest obstacles right now is that some of the software tools are not really quite ready for HOP concepts. And that comes from Andrea Baker, the HOP mentor. This didn’t make the cut in the story, so this is special inside information that’s coming exclusively to our On the Safe Side listeners. She said: if I start to embrace these HOP concepts, I realize that maybe post-event, I need to have different conversations with folks. As an aside, HOP proponents will often call incident investigations post-event reviews. She continues: I need to be able to ask questions differently. And then you log onto a program and it asks you for root cause analysis or corrective action within 24 hours. Well, that’s kind of anti-HOP.

HOP proponents say that root cause analysis is great if you’re talking about a piece of machinery: a belt broke and therefore it’s not working. Human nature and human dynamics, however, are usually far too complicated to get narrowed down into an effective actual root cause analysis. And Baker called the current state of safety software a pretty big barrier toward having operational learning type conversations. Again, software programs haven’t quite caught up to HOP concepts, but I imagine that it won’t take too long.

Well, you spoke about accountability earlier, and I’d imagine that certain people may hear that we shouldn’t rush to discipline workers for mistakes, or that blame fixes nothing, and might think, well, where’s the accountability? So with that, what do experts say about HOP and accountability?

Alan Ferguson: Well, experts say HOP doesn’t depart from accountability despite the appearance, and that by having a more open conversation with workers and their challenges, you’ll actually avoid a false sense of accountability. A false sense of accountability is things like a policy or procedure that someone can use to shift blame. Like saying, I was just following what was in the procedure, or, you’ll have to talk to my boss about that. Those are examples of low accountability. And HOP coach Bob Edwards said that organizations should look for real accountability instead of a false sense that they’re holding workers accountable. Quote: accountability is an intrinsic value that people have, he said. I’m willing to tell you the story of what my world looks like and to give you an account of what I’ve done and why I’ve done it. That’s intrinsic. So we want to build an environment where people are more accountable. And a big piece of it is psychological safety: I have a safe place, I can talk to you about what it really took to get this work done.

Here’s perhaps an example of looking at accountability through a HOP lens. One source told me they had a forklift driver who was struggling in his job, kept messing up and kept messing up. And when they went through their process, this source called it a culpability matrix, it turned out this person wasn’t a very good forklift driver. But the company didn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. They tried to transfer him to another job. Ultimately, he couldn’t take it because of the pay, but they didn’t fire him right on the spot. So some of the questions in that case: is this person in the right job? Can they fit somewhere else in the company? Do we need to reexamine our hiring practices? I mentioned this in the story: HOP concepts can apply to other parts of an organization, not just safety, because a big piece of it is about organizational learning and improvement.

Well, thank you so much as always, Alan, for this interesting and unique feature. If you want to read more about human and organizational performance, and a lot of other news from around the safety world, please check out the October issue of Safety and Health Magazine, or visit us online at safetyandhealthmagazine.com.

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There’s an excellent chance that electricity probably is present wherever you work, which means it also is presenting a hazard. As our guest on this month’s segment of Five Questions With can tell us, these hazards vary. Although each use of electricity creates a potential exposure to a hazard, the dangers usually are different. Brett Brenner is president of Electrical Safety Foundation International, and we welcome him today to discuss the ins and outs of electrical safety, touching upon common hazards on the job, as well as things to look out for while working remotely. Brett, it’s great to have you with us. Thanks for joining the podcast.

Brett Brenner: Appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.

Well, let’s start with electricity in general. Just what makes it so uniquely dangerous and, unfortunately, fatal?

Brett Brenner: So electricity is unique in the fact that you usually can’t see it, smell it, taste it, or anything else. And so it’s not really front and center of mind. We live in a more electrified world than ever. When we were flying, we were all like vampires going around looking for outlets to charge our cell phones, and we just don’t realize how many things have to be powered on in some way, shape, or form. Whether it’s the smart devices that are in our homes that are becoming more smart themselves, to when we go out and do things on the job where we’re always looking for power sources.

Electricity, we as an industry try to keep it simple, where we keep any dangers away or behind walls and things like that. But people are often, sometimes, unfortunately, too creative in either doing things themselves around the home or figuring out workarounds on the job. And they can often get themselves in trouble. It’s one of those things where we look at statistics and we start to see a lot of injuries that don’t have to happen on a daily basis. Almost six people a day are hurt from electricity. And typically, when we do have a death due to electricity, it’s often something that’s pretty catastrophic. The only thing worse than that is kind of a bomb going off. Just because it’s something that’s so powerful that people just don’t have any respect for sometimes, it is often fatal because it’s just something that your body does not work well with. It’s one of those things where we like to keep it out of sight, out of mind, which is great. But now that the world is becoming more electrified, it definitely is becoming more front and center, and we need to start thinking about it and appreciate it and respect it a little bit more.

In recent years, the industries with the leading number of non-fatal occupational electrical injuries involved occupations that don’t traditionally receive extensive electrical training. So where can employers look to enhance these workers’ awareness of electrical hazards?

Brett Brenner: When we look at the statistics, the story it’s telling us is almost 60 percent, or above 60 percent of the time, it’s somebody that is not electrically trained. That means that it’s not an electrician, it’s not a utility line worker, it’s not somebody that probably has almost any electrical experience at all. To give it to you in a couple different scenarios: you’re a homeowner breaking out a ladder to do some work on the roof, and you’re carrying that ladder vertically versus horizontally, and you’re hitting an overhead power line, or you’re putting it into a tree where there’s a power line. It’s a perfect example of people just not really knowing their surroundings. And they’re not going to think about it because it’s out of sight, out of mind. It’s typically just something so benign that you’re not going to know it’s something dangerous. It’s not going to scream out to you.

In a setting like a workplace, oftentimes, and I can tell you from the places that are electrically minded, being utilities and places like that, or places that I visit: where’s the janitor and the cleaning crew storing a lot of their stuff, with their ladders? It’s often in a fenced off, marked up area that says electrical hazards inside. And you’ve got people that have no clue what they’re going into, and you’re not going to get a warning that something’s going to happen to you if you touch the wrong thing. And so the people that are less likely to know anything about electricity are the ones that are getting hurt. That’s what the statistics are telling us.

The people that are trained in electricity oftentimes understand the dangers and have seen what can happen if something goes wrong. They’re more mindful of electricity, and they are trained properly. They have their proper PPE, and Lord knows we know about PPE because of COVID, but they’re dressed from head to toe typically. The problem is electrical accidents happen so infrequently that many journeymen electricians really never see any accidents happen. And so you start to get complacent. Complacency is something we’re seeing for people that are trained. And so it’s one of those things where you just kind of have to remind people, in your Monday morning meetings, your safety briefs, maybe you dust off your employee handbook, and just tell people: hey, electricity is uniquely dangerous. Just think about things. If you’re not supposed to be in an area, a lot of times that’s because there’s a hazard associated with it, whether it’s chemical, petrochem, whether it’s electricity, you name it. Those areas are marked off, fenced off for a reason. They’re not there just for fun.

Sometimes I think we just kind of act like, oh, we can walk away from it. Electricity is one of those things that if you tangle with it, you’re likely not going to be able to walk away from it, or at least not walk away from that encounter with that device or whatever it might be. In terms of solutions, the industry is obviously trying to design things safe by design, right? And we’re doing a lot of great things with new technology that’s coming out and on board. But there’s still a lot of legacy things that are out there, motors and pumps and all kinds of things that could potentially go wrong, or the energy could be escaping somehow. It’s very, very vital to do your checks and balances. Follow NFPA 70E, which is basically the workplace safety best practices for how to install and operate electrical devices. You want to follow that to a T. Those layers of protection are there for a reason. Usually, and I would say 99 percent of the time when I read an OSHA report and look at the description of what happened, it’s because multiple steps were skipped. PPE was not worn in multiple ways. An accident happened, what I like to call an incident versus an accident, because it is preventable. People are going in places they shouldn’t. And so it’s just a multitude of oopses that become something that’s devastating.

Well, Brett, obviously not all potential exposures to electrical hazards are created equal. It depends on the task. With that in mind, what are some good foundation points for electrical training, especially when we think about workers who are in non-electrical jobs?

Brett Brenner: Yeah, great question. So I think the biggest thing you have to do is look at the skill set that’s needed to do a job. A couple of questions that we always tell people to ask: have you properly been trained to complete the job safely? Are you competent enough to be able to say, you know what, I haven’t done this, I’m not comfortable enough, and to be able to back away? There’s no macho-ness in saying, I just haven’t done this. And every situation is unique. So for instance, you could have done this exact same job with the exact same equipment, but in a different location there could be a wall or a fence or some other barrier that you’re not used to that could cause something to be different. And so you really have to go through and make sure that if I’ve done the task before, do I have the right training?

The next thing is, do you have the right tools that you need? It’s usually a big problem. Are they insulated the correct way? If you’re not sure, that’s probably a really good warning symbol to say, maybe I’m not qualified to do this job, or maybe I didn’t think through this job well enough. Then there’s the hierarchy of controls that are out there. Again, we talked about PPE earlier, but all these different things are supposed to work in tandem. So if one thing fails, something’s there to protect you. But if all those things are gone, you’re not going to have much of a chance to save yourself.

The other thing is, have you done the proper job planning, and have you done the proper risk assessment to understand how much energy you could potentially be working with? For instance, there are different levels of PPE that are required for certain energy levels. Have you run those studies to make sure you’re working on the right equipment and you have the right tools, the right PPE? Also, a lot of times when we read the narratives of these OSHA reports, and they’re kind of the window to our understanding of what actually went wrong, so we can learn, unfortunately, from some other people’s mistakes, and we want to put those stories out there so people can learn from them, a lot of times what we’re seeing is it’s not something that they did. It’s something that the guy before them did, the gal before them did. They left something in the wrong place, or they didn’t tighten something down, or they forgot to latch a door correctly. They left a screwdriver where it wasn’t supposed to be. And that could have happened multiple years ago. So sometimes it’s not even things that you do, and that’s the reason why PPE is there, to make sure that things are done correctly.

And then one thing I always like to tell people: if there’s no energy, and we’re getting away from the times, even in the electrical world, where things have to be live to troubleshoot, if you’re de-energized and you’re sure you’re de-energized and turning off the electricity, the hazard goes away. If you’re testing first to make sure there’s energy, you’re testing after you turn off the energy, and you’re locking out and tagging out, that’s the number one thing that we’re seeing that people are not doing. They’re getting complacent, they’re getting a little bit lazy, and they’re not turning off the potential hazard. And that would solve all the problems. So if you made a mistake and there’s no hazard, there’s no electrical potential of incident, you could probably walk away from it. These are the basics that we’re talking about. And I understand it’s very easy to get complacent with a job that you’ve done time and time again, but it’s always uniquely different every time you do it, even if it’s in the same location. Somebody could have done something different. And that’s typically when people are getting hurt. And that’s what the stories and the data tell us.

Recent ESFI analysis shows that more than one third of electrical related workplace fatalities between 2011 and 2017 were caused by overhead power lines. How can hazards related to this exposure be mitigated?

Brett Brenner: It’s something that we try to do: identify, number one, who’s being hurt; number two, the skill set of who’s being hurt; and number three, the setting. And when we did the analysis of the data, we found that it typically involves an overhead power line contact, it typically is in a construction type setting, and it typically involves somebody that’s not trained. Those were the three clear takeaways.

So let me give you a couple of different scenarios and settings where maybe this might hit home a little bit more. I mentioned the residential setting. Whether you’re doing something with a ladder as a homeowner, or you’re having somebody come out, the trunk slammer, the two guys in the back of a truck that come out and do your general contracting around your house: that ladder example of carrying something vertically is a big no-no. We know that coming in contact with power lines is ultimately dangerous. A lot of people say, oh, that’s telephone wire, that’s something else. It’s typically not. If it’s on the top of a power utility pole, it’s typically a utility line. It’s got power running through it.

Let me go to a construction site setting. A couple different scenarios that we’ve seen that have popped out to us. You have a bunch of temporary power that might be at a construction site, because everybody needs power to run things. So you either have something like a portable generator and you’ve got lines hanging where they shouldn’t, and people are getting in trouble in that aspect. Or let’s put it a different way: you’re working a dump truck, and these people that are driving the dump truck, they only have one job. A lot of times they’re not necessarily looking up in all ways. And so they’re getting into some tight places, and then they’re raising their bed, which can go up twice the height of their truck, and they’re bumping into a power line. Lots of videos online, you can see people that have done that. And so there’s all kinds of different scenarios where you can get yourself into trouble. Our theme of trying to keep workers safe on the construction site is: look up in all ways. So every which way around you, and then always, meaning you look up all the time. It’s not something you just take for granted.

Additionally, I would say that 811, call 811 or call Miss Utility, to identify and mark underground lines, is great. And we’ve done a great job of having people look for those lines, look for the markings and all that kind of stuff. But typically in those same corridors, the reason why there’s corridors is because you’ve got overhead power lines. And so you have people that are trained to look down, where maybe they’re not looking up. It kind of makes sense that maybe sometimes we’ve unfortunately trained people to look down too much, where they’re not looking in all different directions to make sure that they’re in good shape and they don’t have any hazards around them. Power lines, there’s not a protective coating on them 99 percent of the time. They are energized almost all the time. And so if you come in contact with them, it is often a deadly encounter.

Working remotely is still a reality for many people. Which electrical safety concerns in the home should people be mindful of while they’re working from home?

Brett Brenner: As I mentioned before, we look at statistics in terms of being a lagging indicator, which is great. But the problem is, statistics are probably two years behind where we are currently. So when COVID hit and everybody shifted back home, we had people that maybe had temporary workstations set up. And I can tell you, just looking around under my desk, I’m at a temporary workstation and I’ve got four plugs plugged into an outlet. And I’m fairly confident the circuit’s not overloaded and everything is safe. But is everybody thinking about that? Or are they just hunting for power to make sure that they have a quiet place for, you know, a podcast like we’re doing?

Realistically, when we started looking at statistics, we also look at live statistics, meaning we comb the internet and traditional media for fires that happen around the country, and we start to investigate those, read those stories, and categorize those stories to give us live statistics. And what we were seeing during COVID is we had a lot of people that were having space heater fires, because they were going in their basements and they were plugging in, and they were either overloading circuits or they were leaving their space heater on, and it caused a fire. So when you think about human nature and what we all do in our daily tasks, as we start to work at home and things shift, you can see how these hazards present themselves.

The one positive that came out of COVID when it comes to upgrading your home: people are taking electricity more seriously because they need it in more places. If your home was built, which is typically in the 70s on average in the United States, a lot of people are updating those rooms and they’re updating the electrical needs that they have, whether it’s something as simple as a smart home device to make life a little bit more easy, or whether it’s adding USB plugs versus standard plugs so you can actually charge more things at one time.

Some of the tips that we can give you, and I think they’re kind of no brainers, but they bear repeating, because you don’t really care about this stuff until something goes wrong, which is what the industry doesn’t want you to worry about. We want to keep things very safe and don’t want you to think about it if you don’t have to. But overloading circuits is what we see. Overloading outlets, that’s a big deal. When you’re starting to have issues with electrical loads in your house, you’ll start to see surges in your home. So for instance, when the HVAC system or the refrigerator or your wife’s hairdryer or daughter’s hairdryer flips on and you see a dimming of the lights or something, that’s a surge in your system. And sometimes that can create issues.

Just for a rule of thumb, you’ve got probably 15,000 to 20,000 dollars of things that are hooked up or plugged in, from your stove, your refrigerator, to your expensive TV, your stereo, you name it. So around a typical house, there’s about 15 grand worth of stuff that’s plugged in. About 80 percent of all surges that happen to your house happen in your house. They’re not coming from outside. A lot of times people think, oh, I want to protect myself from things like lightning that come from outside the house. But most of the time, it’s something inside your house that’s degrading your electronics. So it’s something to think about for surge protection. That can either be in a form of localized surge protection, like I have my laptop plugged into a surge protector, which is pretty typical, all the way up to whole home surge protection, which provides you protection across the home.

One thing we see that’s very common out there is overuse of extension cords. Extension cords are only supposed to be used temporarily, and only used for 30 days. We see all kinds of instances where people are running these cords behind furniture, running them under carpets, and kind of using them as permanent outlets wherever they want them. And it’s a big problem. Additionally, we see extension cords being used outside which are not outdoor rated. A lot of times around the holidays, we have Christmas lights and things like that being plugged in. We want to have the great looking things on the outside of the house, but that creates electrical hazards as well.

Those are just a couple of things. We’ve got a litany of stuff on our website. Anybody can use any of that stuff for free, from infographics to videos that tell you the things to look out for, seasonal-wise, from disasters that might happen, to holiday season, to just preventing home fires and cooking fires. We’ve got a lot of that on our website that people can go and peruse, and typically it’s topical. So it gets you in the mindset of: what do I need to know now? What do I need to know when it comes to spring cleaning? A litany of tips and tools that you can spread around your community, which we hope you do.

And I think it’s important too, and I’m sure many of you all realize this that are listening: we’re great at protecting ourselves at work with gloves and eye protection and everything else. You’ve got to make sure you take those same practices with you at home. We don’t want to see you get hurt at home either. And it’s great that people are more confident to do things themselves at home. But electricity, if you’re not 100 percent confident in what you’re doing, please get a professional to do it. It’s worth the peace of mind. And it could be something that doesn’t even affect you. It could be the next homeowner. But it’s something that if it’s not done correctly, it can cause serious hazards for everybody.

Well, Brett, we appreciate you sharing your expertise with our listeners. Thanks for everything you and ESFI do for worker safety and health. It was a pleasure to have you with us here on the safe side.

Barry Bottino: Well, from your morning trip to the coffee shop, to the weekly outing to the grocery store, fall means there’s no escaping those dreaded two words: pumpkin spiced. Now I know some folks love pumpkin spiced anything, but I’m not among that crowd. On this month’s pop quiz, we want to share our favorite things about fall that don’t come in cups of three different sizes. And I’ll go first. I would say my favorite thing about fall, growing up in the Midwest, is fall colors. And a Sunday drive through the country is really enjoyable in the Midwest in the fall. A close second would be apple cider. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve always had that taste for apple cider, especially from farmer’s markets around my home. I would have to say that one of the most enjoyable experiences I ever had was a friend made his own apple press one year and got a bunch of bushels of apples, and we made a bunch of apple cider, which was an awesome time. Kevin, how about you?

Kevin Druley: I’d say in general, just the opportunity to be outdoors. Certainly to see those colors that you mentioned, but just also the activities, anything from being pretty active, playing a game of football or baseball, or just really any outdoor pickup sport can be played in the fall, and you’re not sweating your brains out like in the summer. But also going to a festival, walking around a town square or a nature preserve, depending on your setting. It really just lends itself to getting outside and soaking up the sun and the weather for another couple afternoons before old man winter sets in. Alan, how about you?

Alan Ferguson: I’m going to say an answer that’s along the same lines as yours. I’d have to say the cooler weather. I mean, Barry gave a great answer as well with the changing colors and cider, that’s great. But I really like that the temperatures go down just enough. I do love how the Chicago area embraces the summer with the festivals or movies in the park, but sometimes that comes with heat and humidity. We went to about five movies at Navy Pier this year and had to haul a wagon full of stuff in that heat and humidity, and it’s just not fun at times. There always comes a point in the summer where I can’t wait for cold temperatures. I did remark earlier this summer, it hasn’t gotten to that point yet. Well, it did, I think about a week ago, when we had a really, really hot stretch. And I was like, no, I really can’t wait for the temperatures to cool down. I really love light jacket weather. My first real experience was covering high school football games. Right around kickoff in the middle of the season was often some of the most gorgeous weather. I have a lot of great fall memories from that, just standing on the sidelines, waiting for the kickoff, thinking, this is really great weather right now.

Barry Bottino: Well, great discussion, guys. Thanks, Alan. And thanks, Kevin. Now we want to hear from you, our listeners. Go ahead and share your favorite fall flavors, colors, and experiences by emailing us at safehealth@nsc.org or checking in with the hashtag safesidepopquiz on social media.

We want to say thank you to everyone out there for spending a little time with us today. We’d also like to thank our sponsor, Westex, a Milliken brand. If you want to keep your employees, your colleagues, and your family members safe, we have just the publication for you: Family Safety and Health. Each issue is packed with helpful tips that will keep families safe at home and in the community, along with informational articles about your health. To get a free copy or learn more, visit our new website, safetyandhealthmagazine.com/family, or subscribe by calling 800-621-7619. If you’d like to share some feedback, email us at safehealth@nsc.org. To find stories such as my feature on human and organizational performance, as well as all the latest news about safety and health, visit us online at safetyandhealthmagazine.com. Also, make sure you follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Original music for this podcast was provided by Steve Maslin. Thank you, Steve. We’ll be back next month with another episode to have more safety-related discussions, talk to trusted voices from around the profession, and hopefully make you smile a little. In the meantime, feel free to tell a fellow Safety Pro about this podcast, and please stay on the safe side. Thank you.