Category Archives: Uncategorized

Safety Training Superheroes and Sketchnoting

Thank you so much to fellow “superhero of safety training” Linda Tapp (aka Safety FUNdamentals) for summarizing our ASSP Safety 2020 Virtual session into sketchnote format!

Check out her blog post with the sketchnote and process here. Make sure to sign up for her emails, she always has epic safety training info.

One of the thought-provoking and well-presented sessions at Safety 2020 Virtual included Danyle Hepler and Victor Toy discussing pandemic planning & systems thinking. Danyle used a white board to sketch things as part of her presentation. If you’re looking for a new safety training technique to level up your virtual and in person training, go to the drawing board, literally! Jo Pina also does a great job with using a white board and sketching and writing to enhance her safety communication. Check out her YouTube channel here.

If you’re still looking for more safety training tips, listen to the Superheroes of Safety Training from the second season of the Safety Justice League podcast.

Risk Control Phone Survey Resources

Are you a risk control consultant? Here’s some quick tips I’ve used successfully over the years to approach (the sometimes dreaded) phone survey. Risk control phone surveys and annual reports can be cumbersome, but they don’t have to be impossible. I’ve identified some go-to links for the lines of coverage I most frequently survey for clients. The information provided by these free searches enable you as the risk control consultant to craft specific open-ended questions for the insureds or prospects you conduct surveys on. It shows that you have a grasp of what the company does and how they’ve fared with the regulators! You can also demonstrate value by coaching them on how to access these sites for themselves to verify their own records as well as their subcontractors, vendors, and other business partners.

Workers Compensation

The OSHA Establishment Search enables you to search for a company’s OSHA inspection and violation history. Use a minimum amount of the company’s name information for a better search, for example “Abby Ferri Construction Company” should be shortened to “Ferri” or “Ferri Construction” to ensure relevant results are found.

If a company operates in one state, you can narrow the search to one state. Companies in state plan states like California may be subject to multiple inspections just for starting new work, usually, these inspections are for license or certification reasons only, and no violations are issued. It may be useful to choose the option view only the inspections that resulted in violations to narrow the search results.

When researching a company that has multiple additional named insureds or entities, be sure to look up each entity! Often, a holding company will not have inspection or violation activity, but the individual entities or subsidiaries will.

The MSHA Mine Data Retrieval System is a great resource to use for companies that own, operate, or conduct work at mining sites. Even if a company states they do not conduct much mine work, you will be able to verify that using the MDRS.

Use a simple Google search to look up news articles and press releases about companies. If there are severe claims or fatal incidents, reputable news sources can provide more details.

General Liability, Product, Pollution

The EPA ECHO search is useful but can be tough to narrow down. Use as much detail about the company’s name and location to narrow down the search results, this is the opposite of my advice for the OSHA Establishment Search! When you do get a “hit” on an enforcement action, the site provides many details if you keep clicking hyperlinks. I have been able to find very specific spill incident or deficient program information using EPA ECHO, which allows me to ask detailed questions of the insured or prospect, ultimately leading to a nice report for underwriting.

Auto Liability

For companies with a DOT regulated fleet, the FMCSA SAFER site’s Company Snapshot is a must-search resource. If you know a company’s DOT number, you can easily find the right SAFER report. If not, use the same advice as the OSHA Establishment Search to find the company, you can further narrow down by location on the next step. The SAFER site allows you to download the entire SAFER Safety Measurement System (SMS) file in Excel, which is often a great addendum to a risk control report, especially with large fleets or fleets with a large amount of inspections.

Women & Safety Keynote – one year later

The following is an article version of my speaking notes from the VPPPA Safety+ event in August 2019 in New Orleans, Louisiana. I was one of three speakers given the opportunity to deliver a ten-minute keynote address in Ted Talk style. The other two speakers were Frank King and Glenn Trout. I was the second speaker in front of the crowd of over 3,000 VPPPA members and supporters.

These notes have been kept in my Google Keep app, and I felt now, a year later, was a great time to share them with you! I’ve added some links to take you to further resources. My original notes were organized in one statement per line so I could easily review them before the keynote. I used a memory and visualization technique I learned from Linda Tapp called the Method of Loci to commit the info to memory in short time to deliver the keynote without notes.

If you want the full experience, download the keynote slides that appeared behind me, reach out with any questions, anytime.

Abby Ferri Women & Safety Keynote

Good Afternoon!

As a woman in safety, one of my roles is Administrator of the ASSP’s Women in Safety Excellence common interest group. In this position, I’m often asked for my take on current events related to safety.

One such item in the past year was the NASA space suit saga, when a spacewalk was cancelled because the two women were not able to be outfitted in space suits that fit them. Women in trades, manufacturing, oil & gas, emergency response, law enforcement, and women safety professionals saw their stories reflected in what happened with the women astronauts. It became an accidental pivotal moment for safety concerns that disproportionately impact women – not just PPE fit, but other topics as well.

Besides the fairly easy-to-talk-about issue of PPE fit, WISE focused on two other issues impacting women: workplace violence and women in safety leadership roles in safety. These 3 topics were discussed in the fall of 2018 with over 50 people representing multiple industries and viewpoints. You can download the report at www.assp.org/womensreport

My interest in the topic of workplace violence started when I stumbled on a statistic about 5 years ago that homicide is the leading cause of death for women in the workplace. It shocked me and I didn’t believe it at first because it was something that had not been talked about in my safety circles. As I repeated the statistic, I found that others were just as surprised. It’s a tough topic because as safety professionals, we want to work on being proactive and preventing things from occurring. This is difficult when more than 25% of these homicides are committed by someone known to the victim, and 16% are related to domestic violence – these are society problems that we often do not think of as workplace problems.

It has become important to clarify to safety peers that society concerns do not stop at the doors of our workplaces or the fences of our jobsites – society’s problems ARE our workplace problems. This reasoning leads easily to other society problems of the moment including opioids and other substance abuse, and access and utilization of mental health resources. Which also lead us to Total Worker Health, which I am so excited about.

The next topic WISE chose to focus on is women in leadership roles in EH&S. This means manager, director, and executive “C-Suite” roles. While women are rising in numbers in EH&S careers, they are not represented equitably in these highest of leadership roles. When you dig in to this topic, you find that women often leave a workplace before promotions can occur, often due to family commitments, birth of a child and the ensuing care of a newborn, or caring for an elder family member, and maybe do not re-enter the workplace until years later when they may be treated as a newcomer instead of an experienced professional who is back and ready, qualified, and more than able to lead.

Women in these roles cannot be discussed without addressing the salary gap that exists, even in our industry. One can look at industry salary surveys to easily find these real numbers. Regardless of leadership level, our industry still faces a safety professional shortage. When we are losing qualified women, our entire industry suffers. Encouraging young women to enter the safety career path and STAY IN it has become one of the most important goals of my professional life.

PPE fit, the easiest to talk about, is the work group that I led at the Women’s Workplace Safety Summit and continue to lead as we draft a Technical Report. In short, our goal is to ensure resources so employers provide options for women, and all workers then benefit from this custom approach to size and fit.

Fall protection is one area that is easy to address this topic, fall protection harness testing guidelines are meant for persons ranging from 130 pounds to 310 pounds. This is an easy one because we all know safety professionals that are outside of that range – tell them that harnesses do not need to be tested to THEIR body – you’ll get a response!

One of the key themes from the Summit is that going to the margins of the margins to address problems can benefit all. In this example – workwear geared towards women is now being purchased by men who prefer a slimmer fit compared to traditional workwear that is bulky. The look of our workforce is changing, and manufacturers need to keep up.

Women in safety have come far, but have work to do. I feel we are in exciting times as inactive supporters are becoming engaged allies, this is what is needed to truly make change. What can you do?

Men, we aren’t leaving you out, and, we don’t hate you! The reality is that male voices are often the majority at industry events like this. I’m grateful to J.A. Rodriguez for putting my name in front of the speakers committee for this event!

If you’re a man and find yourself on an all-male panel for a conference or webinar, or other event –  step down or ask one of your women colleagues to take your place or join the panel.

If you’re a supervisor or someone in charge of promoting and hiring, step back and look at your team. Are voices missing? Add them by promoting and hiring.

Speaking of hiring, guide your organization in creating better media to depict real women working for your website images, campus recruiting ads, and internal company newsletters.

This all may seem daunting, but YOU can help – start at your own organization, volunteer to bring women in STEM to school career fairs, call out bad marketing and imaging when you see it – overall, demand better.

As you can tell, I’m passionate about this, I volunteer to provide safety training to Girl Scouts before they build amazing things at STEM camps, and have talked to students as young as 5 years old about safety as a career path.

I’m usually game for a conversation and can help point YOU in a positive and active direction. Find me here at the conference or on social media.

THANK YOU and keep an open mind this week and beyond. THANK YOU

August 24, 2020 Safety News

This week I’m a speaker at the ENR Groundbreaking Women in Construction event. It’s usually held in-person and is virtual this year, which meant I can actually attend! If you’re looking for a solid event this week, you can still register, it starts today and you won’t miss out! Use code Ferri15 for 15% off of any registration level.

If you’re landing here on my site BECAUSE of the GWIC event, welcome! Here’s the links I mentioned in the safety moment:

Safety Justice League

VPPPA Leader Magazine – PPE for Psychosocial Impact

ASSP Women’s Safety Report 

ASSP/ISEA Guidelines for Women’s PPE and Apparel Technical Report

 

This week’s Safety Justice League podcasts include our 100th podcast(!!), guests Stan & Ken from Northern Safety on Wednesday, and Tony Taylor on Friday. Make sure to “follow” the Safety Justice League podcast on your platform of choice, or stream at our website, there’s a lot of great episodes in the archives too! Binge away…

 

News Music:

“Dream Catcher” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

A WISE Wolfpack

The WISE Book Club chose Abby Wambach’s book, Wolfpack, and I was stoked because **ABBY WAMBACH clap clap clapclapclap** and also because the book has been on my list.

In true Abby Ferri form, I procrastinated on reading it. Today is Sunday, book club is Tuesday… I have the physical copy of the book, so I knew it would be a quick read compared to the other books ambitiously chosen by the club! I was worried club members would think this was a silly pick, and that it wasn’t worthy of our time.

20200823_094355.jpg

I was drawn to the book this morning, and read it in less than an hour, mostly while doing squats, lunges, and going up and down the stairs in my house (I’m a multitasker). I’m SO GLAD the club chose the book and that I chose the book today. Abby’s messages are relayed mostly in analogies of her experience as a soccer player (of course), and they resonated with me. I wasn’t a star athlete at all, but always a utility player and loved to make the assist. Whether it was setting up another player, literally with a set on the volleyball court, or making a nice pass on the ice for another player to score a goal – I always enjoyed being in the background. I even had a nickname in volleyball as part of the “back row patrol.” We were an essential part of the team to ensure the hitters would get the nice set so they could smash it. Shout out to coaches Theresa and Julie from middle school and early high school in Bemidji, MN – you still impact my life!

The book brought so many memories up that I hadn’t thought of in a long time. It was a reminder for me to bring that team aspect to work and other initiatives, and reach out to reconnect with some past teammates. If you don’t play sports, the book will hit you differently. Regardless, I think the book is an essential business read, keep it on your desk, and pick it up when you need a boost.

I love that Abby starts the book with a quick story about her being asked to do a speech, but not make it too focused on women. The flipping of the script she describes is exactly what’s making many feel uncomfortable in the workplace right now – would anyone ask a man to not make his speech so focused on men? No! Men have been the default leaders and speakers, and that is a silly question. I’m sure some of you bristle at the fact that Abby Wambach even wrote this book. If that’s you, I suggest you actually read it, it’ll only take an hour. As Abby said in the opening chapter, the book is for men too. As a leader in ASSP’s WISE common interest group, I have spent a lot of time educating people that WISE is open to all and that I personally do not hate men – I even put this last point in my keynote at the 2019 VPPPA Conference. 

The concepts of vulnerability in leadership that are woven throughout the book remind me of Brene Brown, and if you have her books piling up on your shelf, just read Abby’s book real quick instead, then listen to some of Brene’s podcasts to keep exploring these ideas.

Have you read Abby Wambach’s book? What did you think?

 

PPE Fit for Women and Psychosocial Safety of all

The VPPPA gave me an epic opportunity to author an article for their all PPE issue of The Leader magazine. The title of the article is “Improving PPE Fit For Women Impacts The Psychosocial Safety Of All Workers.”

If you’re a VPPPA member, you’ve got access to the entire issue. If you’re not a VPPPA member (yet), the article can be downloaded below:

Improving PPE Fit For Women Impacts The Psychosocial Safety Of All Workers

COVID is a Catalyst

While at a non-routine dentist appointment today, I learned of several things the staff has had to do differently due to COVID. The surprising thing is that these “extra” measures were positively received by staff and they plan to keep it up!

The dentist told me she plans to wear a face shield whenever working with patients in the future because she was surprised by the amount of splashes on the shield after use.

The office invested in a new tool (like this thingy) to provide a barrier between a patient’s tongue and area of the mouth that isn’t part of the procedure. I benefited from this tool because it allowed me to be a bit lazy and not have to actively open my mouth for the drilling (ugh the drilling, the sound!). The tool also had a suction feature that enabled the hygienist to assist the dentist more instead of tending to my drool.

Maybe there are some precautions or gear that are new to your workforce since COVID… Make sure to provide time/space for feedback on what’s working and what can be fine-tuned to be a more sustainable control. If there’s something that is worth sharing, let me know about it!

If you like my SAFE AF neck gaiter, you can get your own or find a design to your liking at Vicki’s Safety Creations. 

The Safety Habit book is live!

First thing’s first, buy The Safety Habit by Abby Ferri, out now on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

Second, thank you to James Altucher for the kick-in-the-butt challenge to write a book in 30 days. He’s one of my favorite internet people of the past 5+ years, and his posts and podcasts always leave me with a TON of ideas. In fact, I already have 3 ideas, oops make that 4, for more books! He taught me that “book” doesn’t have to be a 100s of pages tome, and that I have so much to say that lends itself well to the Kindle book format.

I am a practical, creative, and innovative safety pro that has the ability to communicate safety messages for all types of audiences. I’m looking forward to this new identity as “author” and the platform to write books that a safety pro would share with friends and family.

My ask? Obviously, go buy the book and read it! My big ask? Please write a review – I’m shooting for a ranked book, even if just for a fleeting minute or day. Thanks for your support over the years!

Safety Habit book cover

Gathering, Stories, Equity

The current WISE Book Club book is The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker. I’m listening via Audible, and taking notes on my Google Keep app. It’s been a good system since I learned this spring that I’m not the best at keeping up with reading books despite having a healthy hold list at the local (closed) library and several waiting for my eyes on my phone and iPad Kindle app. I gave in to my “elder millennial” tendencies, and took up a friend on her offer to send me an Audible book to try, and it’s been my go-to method of reading since then! I successfully finished the previous WISE Book Club book, Range, in the same way, but failed to take notes. After learning those lessons, reading Priya’s book via Audible has been enjoyable and educational.

Today, I received Priya’s weekly email, and it struck me. Her book has already encouraged me to think about gatherings I’m responsible for in a different way. This week’s email tells a story of a “Zoommorial.” You may be able to guess what this refers to, or maybe you’ve had to gather awkwardly online to celebrate the memory of someone lost during this time of physical distancing. Even though I’m not planning a funeral or memorial, today is the day my family mourns the loss of my mother in law, Sharon Ferri, who passed away 7 years ago today. Now that the hairs are standing up on your neck too, let’s continue because I did not set out on this blog to pull at your heartstrings for my family’s loss, which you can learn more about here.

The main idea of Priya’s email today was how paying more attention to the “who” of a gathering can bring more meaning to it. The Zoommorial a person planned for their family member ended up being very meaningful because it allowed more communication, as Priya called it “A democratization of who owned her memory.”

This statement brought me to a Hamilton song (of course), “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” Go listen, if you’re a Hamilfan, you’ll cry (“the orphanage…”) then come back.

Now, I want to shift to the living, and how we can mindfully and intentionally approach any gathering we are individually responsible for to ensure we make space for the “democratization” vibe. It may not be appropriate for every gathering, but it will be an improvement for most to enable more voices and stories. It’s often the missing perspectives that we discover too late that end up being the difference-maker in solving problems. 

Even if you don’t read her books, sign up for Priya’s email list, it is very thought-provoking and relevant for safety pros and others responsible for training and meetings.

Send me an email if you’d like me to send you The Art of Gathering via Audible when I finish it, you would need to be a new Audible listener for this to work! On the flip side, if you’d like to gift me any of the books on my Wishlist, check out my ever-expanding list here.

June 29, 2020 Safety News

This news feed took a week off last week to attend the ASSP’s Safety 2020: Virtual conference. It exceeded all expectations and set a new bar for virtual safety education events.

Get caught up on some Safety 2020 takeaways and the latest in COVID-19 & safety.

Music track information:

“Dream Catcher” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/