Managing Psychosocial Risks to Build Safer Workplaces with Kylie Long

Aug 20, 2026

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE:

ABOUT THE EPISODE

Don’t miss the latest episode of The Safety Guru! Join us as Kylie Long, a seasoned expert in workplace health and safety, explores the critical role of managing psychosocial risks to build safer workplaces. She provides a practical guide for leaders to better understand psychosocial risks, their business impacts, and how they can be effectively managed across organizations. Kylie explores the psychosocial risks that can impact workers’ mental health, including the importance of identifying and addressing aspects of work design and management that may cause harm. She also dives into the significant financial and cultural impacts psychosocial risks and injuries can have on organizations, from burnout, high turnover, and absenteeism to broader impacts on workplace culture and performance. Learn practical strategies for overcoming leadership challenges, managing psychosocial risks, and creating sustainable improvements. Tune in for valuable takeaways on strengthening psychosocial safety in your organization, building safer, more supportive workplaces, and enhancing overall performance and well-being. Listen now!

READ THE EPISODE

Real leaders leave a legacy. They capture the hearts and minds of their teams. Their origin story puts the safety and well-being of their people first. Great companies ubiquitously have safe yet productive operations. For those companies, safety is an investment, not a cost for the C-suite. It’s a real topic of daily focus. This is The Safety Guru with your host, Eric Michrowski, a globally recognized ops and safety guru, public speaker, and author. Are you ready to leave a safety legacy? Your legacy success story begins now.

Hi and welcome to The Safety Guru. Today I’m very excited to have with me Kylie Long, who is a workplace health and safety and psychosocial risk expert coming from Australia. Kylie, welcome to the show. Very excited to have you with me today.

Good morning from Australia. Thanks, Eric. Thanks for having me.

So, let’s get started with a little bit about your background because you have pretty diverse background that got you in this, into this space.

Yes, I do. So, uh, I’m a registered nurse. I still work as a registered nurse, uh, with over 30 years of experience in that space. But about 20 years ago, I shifted into workplace health and safety, primarily to move away from the shift work point of view, um, and working on a 24/7 schedule availability for the year. Uh, but my focus was always on cardiac where people got better, and then I moved into emergency space where I see the back end of when things go wrong. Um, so I transitioned into workplace health and safety, and I see how workplace systems directly impact people when they’re working under pressure, particularly in the emergency department.

Sure.

So, things that I would often see that really link into the psychosocial space that I work in are things like, I see staff with burnout or chronic stress or fatigue.

Sure.

Bullying, poor leadership behaviors and practices as well, as well as sometimes unclear roles within organizations, and also things around unmanaged workloads, which is particularly a hot topic within the nursing profession here.

I’m sure. I think in Australia, but also pretty much worldwide. I’ve heard a lot of it in NHS in the UK, pretty much every, every part. And same as the shifts, the burnout, very, very common. You touch on psychosocial risk. It’s something that Australia is really leading in, in that space. Tell me a little bit about what it is and what are some of the risks that it presents.

So psychosocial safety is not anything new inside workplace. Um, people tend to think it’s something new that need— leaders need to be doing, and organizations need to be doing. Uh, it’s just that there’s some more structure around it at the moment, particularly in Australia with the legislative requirement. So, it’s basically the legal requirement to protect your workers from psychosocial harm in the same way that we would protect our workers from a physical injury. It really focuses on identifying controlling aspects, um, of work design and management that can cause damage to the mental health of a worker. So, some key hazards or things that you might see in the workplace from an organizational perspective, you might see things like excessive workloads, and we just spoke about that before. Unrealistic deadlines, poor organizational change management. Change management’s a big one in organizations. Not many organizations I see do it particularly well. There are always learnings from change management processes. Intrusive sort of surveillance or poor physical work environments as well. But as a leader, you might see things from a leadership perspective. There might be poor support for your workers. There might be low job control over the tasks they’re actually doing.

Or it might be continued sustained high job demand. So, you know, that continual like working under pressure and, you know, you know, having high output that you need to be doing within the workplace, or really things around unclear expectations and poor communications, a particular one around then. And then there might be individual behaviors that workers might be displaying towards each other or, you know, displaying towards leaders, things like— the typical ones like bullying and harassment, aggression, and then that sort of toxic workplace relationships within organizations, which ultimately reflect the culture of the business.

Mm-hmm. And some of these are quite self-evident, but what would be some of the business impacts for organizations when they’ve got presence of these psychosocial risks or even on workplace culture?

So, if you’re looking at the business impacts, there’s things that are from a financial perspective, but also from a cultural perspective. So generally, Generally, when we look at sort of the data in Australia particularly, and I’m assuming it would be across, you know, globally as well, the psychological injuries actually cost 4 times than the physical claim injuries. And workers who sustain a psychological injury generally can take 5 times longer to recover, and they might be 5 times longer away from the workplace than physical injuries themselves. So, there’s a huge financial impact to a business there.

Sure.

If it’s not a claim that goes through, it might be things like increased absenteeism, but it also could be presenteeism as well, where we talk about that sort of silent sort of resignation that you’re just going through the motions. You haven’t resigned, but you’re just going through the motions and doing what you need to do on a daily basis, which really impacts the team performance, but also the productivity of the team as well.

Right.

You might have also see if there are people moving away from the business, you might see like high turnover rates, which then would ultimately cost businesses because they have to go and recruit, onboard, and train people. Or they might need to look at their succession planning when people leave. Like someone’s got to— if they haven’t got good succession planning in place, then there’s a gap there for a period of time. Um, there’s— if you’ve got burnout and disengagement from your workers, that can lead to things like slower decision-making and increased errors. So, I know that particularly from a nursing perspective, you know, when you do have that burnout, that there is increased risk of errors, particularly, you know, medication errors, those kinds of things. And I guess if you’re fatigued or you’re at, you know, stress levels increase, you are more prone to make mistakes, and you might need to rework things as well, which obviously costs businesses as well due to that time delay. And then if you do have that toxic sort of work culture, you might have an increase in conflicts or complaints coming in, or there might be things like blame behaviors and that disengagement again.

Yeah, so generally people feel like they can’t speak up because if they do speak up, they’re like, they’ll be sort of targeted, I guess, is the concern that they had, that the workers do have.

Sure.

And then I guess from a leadership perspective, leaders might feel burnt out, or they might feel like they’re just doing firefighting decision-making, where they’re just doing that sort of reactive decision-making. And then it’s, you know, disruptive to the organization as a whole. So there’s lots of different things that sort of can come in, even if someone doesn’t put in a psycho— psychological claim. There’s sort of the other flow-on effects for the business.

Sure.

I guess a team that sort of functions in that sort of survival mode, they’re not sort of looking— they’re not sort of functioning in that sort of innovation and continuous improvement model which businesses want to focus on. So, it really does have There’s lots of impacts that it has on a business from not only an organizational perspective, but it flows down to leaders and workers as well.

Yeah, and ultimately the bottom line, if you’re not innovating as what you’re describing, it frequently has a bottom-line impact, but also, it’s an impact on physical safety. Because if you don’t feel comfortable speaking up, you’re also more exposed to one, make mistakes, but also, uh, to get into harm’s way.

Correct. Yeah.

And so, what are some of the best tactics an organization can take on to address and improve on the psychosocial risk?

Uh, so the, so from, from a leadership perspective, they can really start looking at some of those sort of key hazards that particularly in Australia that the legislation focuses on. So, identifying the hazards. So, start looking at the teams and start looking at things like, do we have excessive workloads? Or unrealistic deadlines? Do we have chronic understaffing and constant overtime? Like, are people missing their meal breaks? Are people staying back late on a, you know, regular basis? Right. Are people not sure about what their role actually is, or they might have conflicting priorities and they’re not sure what their priorities are for the week or even for the day? Um, so some things, some practical things like, you know, if you notice that your workers are skipping breaks or they’re staying back on a daily basis or they’re looking constantly exhausted, have a look at your workload and have a look at the staffing issues to see if you need to bring in— particularly during, you know, the peak times in retail that we look at, Christmas time— do we need to bring in more staff to cover that area at Christmas time, or Winter, when it’s the flu season, do we need to bring in more staff to cover sick leave rather than working down in the number of staff for that day?

If teams are confused about what their priorities are during, for example, an organizational change, need to focus in on what the change management tactic is that we’re using within the organization. And communication’s a key one as well during that process. So, when things are communicated clearly and consistently on a regular basis during a change management process, people feel less fear and there’s less rumors that go around. So that’s clear, consistent messaging that’s going out to people, so they don’t feel like that rumor sort of starts that’s not actually substantiated.

Right.

Um, if workers stop speaking up or raising concerns, that’s another red flag for leaders. So, um, often psychological safety is linked to a visibility issue. So, making sure that leaders are visible within the organization so that workers can go and approach them and talk to them.

Sure.

That sort of open-door policy, um, and be, you know, up opportunities for that communication and collaboration within their teams.

Mm-hmm.

And if leaders are feeling like they’re constantly firefighting and emotionally exhausted, um, that might reflect on things like poor systems. So having a look at their psychosocial systems and processes, the workplace health and safety systems and processes as well and have a look at what sort of control they can have over different aspects of that, or if they need additional support for themselves in that leadership role. And also have a look to see if complaints and conflict are actually increasing. So, look at what the workload pressure is, is, um, do we have any unclear expectations? And what kind of behaviors do we tolerate? Because that’s another one, like that, just, you know, that just sort of joking, I was just joking sort of, um, culture that we have. So, some things on a practical also point of view that, um, leaders could do, like those daily check-ins with the teams to see, you know, um, what’s making work difficult at the moment, what’s getting in the way of, you know, being able to do our job. Um, regular workload discussions, that really clear prioritization. So, I often take this with it when I’ve worked in organizations where there’s competing demands.

I’ll have a sit-down and discussion with my supervisor or manager and ask them, you know, what’s the focus for this week? What do you definitely need done this week? What can we slide till next week if we need to?

Sure.

And another one, particularly for those large organizations, is that bureaucracy. So that’s that red tape that, you know, we, you know, the hoops that you need to jump through to get things signed off. Um, trying to remove that unnecessary bureaucracy as much as possible for those leaders as well. Yeah. So, there’s some key things that leaders can actually do.

This episode of the Safety Guru Podcast is brought to you by Propulo Consulting, the leading safety and safety culture advisory firm. Whether you are looking to assess your safety culture, develop strategies to level up your safety performance, introduce human performance capabilities, reenergize your BBS program, enhance supervisory safety capabilities, or introduce unique safety leadership training and talent solutions, Propulo has you covered. Visit us at propolo.com.

And I think a lot of what you describe also seems to touch on the system, the system issues that are occurring. I know when we talked about this initially, you talked about leadership training as an example, which is often missing when somebody becomes a leader. The training doesn’t always follow.

Yeah, that’s correct. So often, um, leaders might wait like up to 7 years to actually get a leadership training in within an organization. So, they might be employed for that role based on their technical skills, but they don’t actually have any of that leadership training, um, in place. So, they’ve been managing things like conflict, or they’ve been managing workloads, or they’ve been managing complaints, but they don’t have any sort of formal systems and processes to get that leadership training and follow through what the practical things that they need to be doing. So, it’s often a missed opportunity. And then you’ve already got things ingrained in the way they’re doing things, systems and processes, and then they have to go back and rework that.

And I think sometimes even the frontline supervision is, is often, I find, one of the worst spots in terms of the availability of training. And these are the ones who are impacting the frontline team members typically the most and typically don’t have a lot of training, a lot of background. They were literally the best at the job before, and now they’re supervising a team.

Yeah, correct. So, you wouldn’t place someone in charge of like a high-risk machinery without training them. So why would you put someone in, you know, to lead a team if you weren’t going to give them that leadership development? So, um, and you know, they often work in those sorts of high-risk environments without, you know, little preparation or they don’t have any understanding of, you know, the people management skills as well. Because obviously it’s a practice that people need to, you know, be supported in because not everyone’s a natural leader.

And that’s, that’s an interesting point because in some cases I’ve seen over the years that the leader gets promoted and they see it as that’s what I need to do to get ahead in this organization. But not everybody’s meant to be a leader and sometimes there’s ways to get promoted in expert roles without necessarily having a team that you support.

Yes, completely agree and relate to that. And I am definitely not a person that likes to lead a team just because of all the, the things that are involved, the complexities of leading a team. So, I prefer to be an expert in the field that I’m working in. Yeah.

Right. And typically, how do organizations get started if they realize that they want to address psychosocial? You talked about some of the signs that organizations should be looking for? What would be some of the first steps, uh, and that you typically see?

So, for, from a, it’s mainly focused on a risk management, uh, framework. So, it’s around identifying the hazards, which we spoke about those hazards before. Yeah. Assessing, um, the hazards that you have within the workplace. So, identifying them on your risk matrix or prioritizing them within the business, where they sit, and then having a look at the controls, um, to see what kind of controls that you can put in place and then to manage those risks. So, prioritizing it, focusing on, you know, don’t focus on the low-level stuff like you do with physical hazards around PPE, which would be the policies and procedures. Look at that sort of engineer, you know, elimination and that sort of engineering sort of space about how we can rework what we’re actually doing, how can we design the work differently, what systems and processes do we need to put in place to manage that risk. And then going back and actually reviewing it as well. So, there’s some— the universities here are doing some work at the moment around, well, let’s have a look at where we’re sitting at the moment from a snapshot in terms of our compliance, but then let’s go through and do the work around the risk management perspective.

And then let’s come back in 6 to 12 months to see what, how, what impact we’ve had as a business, um, when we’ve introduced these new systems and processes to manage psychosocial risk. Um, that’s definitely not my specialty because there’s people that work in that space from there is some statistical analysis that they actually do to look at the change management process that businesses have actually been through to see what impact it’s actually had on them from a positive perspective.

Hmm. Absolutely. So why does the topic of psychosocial risk feel difficult for many leaders?

So many, um, leaders think that psychological safety means that it’s about mental illness management for their workers. Or it might be, they think it might be around therapy or managing personalities, particularly difficult personalities, or around avoiding those difficult conversations with their workers.

Yep.

It, it actually doesn’t, it’s not about that. It’s about psychological health that’s always sat within the workplace health and safety legislation.

Sure.

Um, but it’s just changed in terms of with the guidance for it around clarity around the guidance for managing psychosocial risks, but also now what’s enforceable under the legislation as well. So, the word psychological generally will create a fear within leadership and also individuals and teams. The term often triggers some discomfort amongst leaders. Leaders worry about things like, am I responsible for my employees outside of work?

Sure.

Can I still manage performance? That’s another one as well. They’re still concerned about performance managing people because of the implications of that. And particularly in the Australian space, there’s been a little bit of noise around that with large corporations, banking corporations, where someone has been performance managed and then they’ve gone down the line of self-harm. So, there’s been a bit, a little bit of noise in the media around that at the moment. So, you know, they’re concerned, can I still manage my people, um, you know, under this psycho— psychosocial legislation? And another thing is, will every difficult conversation that I have with my team, um, become a claim? You know, will they put a psychosocial claim in, um, against the organization? So, but in reality, its really around psychosocial safety is simply applying the traditional safety principles that we had to manage psycho— psychological harm.

Sure.

Just the same way as you would manage a physical injury, a, you know, physical incident or injury, we need to manage it the same way with a psychological harm as well.

And how does it differ from wellbeing programs?

So psychological safety isn’t really a wellbeing trend. So, it’s not looking at things like engagement surveys and culture surveys.

Sure.

And it’s not about diagnosing workers when you’re looking at wellbeing programs as well. It’s not that sort of quick fix that we need to be focusing on.

Sure.

And it’s not really around creating any new legal obligations as well. It’s really around moving away from wellbeing. It’s around looking at our workplace systems. Yep. How they influence that psychological health. Not just from a physical perspective, but also from that psychological perspective as well.

Sure. And I think to wrap up, what are some of the key takeaways you would have for leaders on this whole topic of psychosocial risk?

Really need to consider it as a core business risk management process. It’s not anything different than what you’ve already been doing. It’s not a new term or new trend that’s come around. And that leadership behavior is one of the strongest psychosocial controls in any organization.

Sure.

And your prevention really lives in amongst how you design your work, what your leadership capability is like within your organization, and we spoke about that in terms of that leadership development, what your communication style is with your workers, and that open-door policy and visibility within the organization. Is getting really clear about the role of the workers within each organization. And particularly, we didn’t touch on it, but around position descriptions, making sure they match what the workers are actually doing, um, and going back and having a look at those and really having a look around, is the workload manageable?

Right.

Um, and do we have respectful behavior that gone are the days of that sort of just joking kind of behavior, um, that we have had in workplaces. Because at the end of the day, when you focus on good psychosocial safety, it will create better performance within your business, a stronger culture. We spoke about the impacts, the negative impacts of psychosocial risk, safer workplaces and healthier workplaces, which ultimately lead to healthier organizations.

Right. And if somebody wants to get in touch with you, Kylie, to learn more about psychosocial risk or, or to explore how to drive improvements, how can they do that?

The best place to find me is actually on LinkedIn where I’ve got good visibility. So, if you just type in Kylie Long, um, and the other place is my website, which is, um, www.support supportandsafetysolutions.com.au. So, if you Google search, yes, Support and Safety Solutions, or LinkedIn for Kylie Long, you’ll find me on that platform as well.

Excellent. Thank you so much for joining me today, Kylie.

Thanks, Eric.

Thank you for listening to The Safety Guru on C-suite Radio. Leave a legacy. Distinguish yourself from the past. Grow your success. Capture the hearts and minds of your teams. Elevate your safety. Like every successful athlete, top leaders continuously invest in their safety leadership with an expert coach to boost safety performance. Begin your journey at execsafetycoach.com. Come back in two weeks for the next episode with your host, Eric Michrowski. This podcast is powered by Propulo Consulting.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Kylie Long is passionate about creating safe, healthy, and thriving workplaces where people feel valued, supported, and empowered to perform at their best.

As the Founder of Support & Safety Solutions, Kylie brings over 20 years of experience in work health and safety, psychosocial risk management, and workplace wellbeing across industries including resources, mining, construction, healthcare, rail, manufacturing, education, and government.

Her career began as a Registered Nurse, where she saw firsthand how health, leadership, and culture shape safety outcomes. That experience now underpins her consulting approach, helping organizations go beyond compliance to build workplaces where people genuinely feel safe, respected, and engaged.

Kylie is known for her calm, strategic, and people-centered approach, as well as her ability to translate complex work health, safety, and wellbeing requirements into clear, actionable steps that make sense in real workplaces.

For more information: www.supportsafetysolutions.com.au

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/kyliealongsafetysupportsolutions

RELATED EPISODE

STAY CONNECTED

The Safety Guru with Eric Michrowski

More Episodes: https://thesafetyculture.guru/

C-Suite Radio: https://c-suitenetwork.com/the-safety-guru/

Eric Michrowski: https://ericmichrowski.com

EXECUTIVE SAFETY COACHING

Like every successful athlete, top leaders continuously invest in their Safety Leadership with an expert coach to boost safety performance.

Safety Leadership coaching has been limited, expensive, and exclusive for too long.

As part of Propulo Consulting’s subscription-based executive membership, our coaching partnership is tailored for top business executives that are motivated to improve safety leadership and commitment.

Unlock your full potential with the only Executive Safety Coaching for Ops & HSE leaders available on the market.

Explore your journey with Executive Safety Coaching at https://www.execsafetycoach.com.

Small Acts, Big Impact: Elevating Safety and Mental Health with Dr. Keita Franklin

May 14, 2026

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE:

ABOUT THE EPISODE

In recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, we’re proud to feature an inspiring conversation with our returning guest, Dr. Keita Franklin. Drawing from fascinating research in her latest book, The Humanity Cure: How Small Acts Can Change the World, we explore how small, intentional acts of care can make a significant impact on workplace safety and mental health. Dr. Franklin discusses how being present, showing compassion, and fostering a sense of belonging can create meaningful change across entire organizations and communities. She also highlights the critical link between mental health and safety, emphasizing how frontline leaders who demonstrate active care, along with peers who consistently support one another, help build psychologically safe workplaces where people feel valued, engaged, and committed to working safely. We also explore the transformative ripple effect of small acts of kindness and how helping others fuels a cycle of connection, resilience, and forward momentum. Don’t miss this impactful episode as we take a deep dive into how small acts can make a big impact in elevating both safety and mental health.

READ THE EPISODE

Real leaders leave a legacy. They capture the hearts and minds of their teams. Their origin story puts the safety and well-being of their people first. Great companies ubiquitously have safe yet productive operations. For those companies, safety is an investment, not a cost. For the C suite, it’s a real topic of daily focus. This is the Safety Guru with your host, Eric Michrowski, a globally recognized ops and safety guru, public speaker and author. Are you ready to leave a safety legacy? Your legacy success story begins now.

Hi and welcome to the Safety Guru. Today I’m very excited to have with me Dr. Keita Franklin, who’s back with us on the show. She has spent decades supporting active duty and veterans. She’s now in the private sector as an author. We’ll talk about your book very soon; the Human How Small Acts Can Change the World. She’s also with Columbia University as part of the Columbia Lighthouse Project. Keita, welcome to the show. Very excited to have you with me.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

So, let’s get started in terms of maybe a little bit of your background and how you got into this space and then we’ll get into the meat of the topic about the small acts that can change the world.

Yes, I spent a full career working with the active-duty population and their families and veterans, mostly around topics related to trauma, child welfare, sexual assault prevention, domestic violence. And then in the last probably 10 plus years I was more narrowly focused on suicide prevention and working on hard issues around public health approaches to saving lives with active duty and veterans. And so, I’m now in private sector but I continue to work across a host of vulnerable populations on these types of issues.

So, so let’s get into this element around how small acts can change the world because I think it’s an incredibly powerful topic. One because we’re releasing this as it’s mental health awareness month. But also, your book is, is being released hopefully this month, hopefully at roughly the same time as the episode launches. So, tell me a little bit about how small acts can change the world.

Yes, you know, I, after I shared with you, you know, I had this full career and you know, really focused in many cases on to include like leading at the national level and doing a lot around evidence-based practices. And it occurred to me probably about two years ago that, you know, we’ve had this sort of chronic problem in the field of mental health where we’ll never have enough providers to meet the demand in our field. There’s a lot of people struggling with issues, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress and we’ll just never meet the demand. And coupled with that, I started thinking about like, what do I know to be true? That is very much at the core of helping people feel better, helping people feel like they’re well. And I know some basic things that I think we just weren’t leveraging enough. And so, it occurred to me that I should pull these stories together and really write about it. And those concepts are really basic concepts that we’re not doing enough, like connecting with one another, making sure people feel like they belong, showing a sense of compassion, just sort of showing up, being present for people.

So, there are a couple of things that I see started sort of themes over the years and I pulled them all together. And I really sort of argue in the book that if we were doing all of these things and we were doing them well, we would likely release some of the burden on mental health because everybody might not need to go to this sort of high and right clinical intervention if they just sort of felt supported day to day. So that was some of the early thinking or early concepts behind the book.

Sure. And tell me a little bit about as well, the ripple effects of these small acts.

Yes. So, as I start digging into the research, this is like probably a no brainer to you, but I started digging into the research and I intuitively knew that when you help others, it feels good to you.

Right.

And you feel like you’re doing a good thing. And it’s, you know, over the years I knew that volunteerism is sort of something we can do to eliminate depression, getting people out, getting them feeling like they’re, you know, paying it forward in their communities. So, I knew this. But in, until I got into the research, did I really start to understand the power of the reciprocal nature between helping others and how it helps you, but also when you help others, they tend to then help others. And it just creates this ripple effect in families and workplaces and society where helping others creates a bit of a momentum where people then feel more empowered to, to pay it forward. And there’s just so much goodness that comes from that sort of ripple effect.

Fascinating. And it makes sense, right? Because. Absolutely. More when you’re doing something positive for someone else, you feel good, but also that another person feels good. And then you had a story about a coffee line as well and how that connects with the small acts.

Yes. You know, so I was in the throes of writing this book and I’m in the research and I’m really looking at things like, you know, early research on like big Brothers and big sisters and how people get assigned a mentor and how that can be life changing. And I’m, you know, pulling the thread. And I, funny enough, I’m in a conversation with my own father about it. And you know, he’s a Vietnam air veteran and I’m sharing this with him and I’m talking about just the power of just like a single conversation. Like it doesn’t have to be a long relationship, but sometimes you can just have a conversation in a coffee line. So, I’m in this conversation with my father and he’s driving back from Virginia to Maine, and he says to me, you know, I stopped off at the exit and I, I tried your method that you told me. I got into a conversation with this woman in line in front of me in the coffee line. And initially I’m thinking, oh goodness, dad, what are you doing? Right. So, he tells me that he got into this conversation and it was awkward at first and you know, he doesn’t know the person, it’s a stranger, but it was a pleasant conversation.

And then he got up to pay for his coffee, and the person had decided to pay, pay for him. And you know, we’ve all heard stories like that. But the important part for me was that my father then got to the car and phoned me and said, you know, I, I tried your method and I felt really good about it. You know, I felt like I had this positive interaction and for her, like she was by herself. You know, she was in line, she was, you know, he told me she was buying a gallon of water. I don’t know why she would need a whole gallon. But you know, we had a great conversation, and he felt good doing it. And then she obvious felt good. You know, she ended up treating dad to a cup of coffee. And I thought, well, you see, that’s a tiny little micro action in action, sort of what I’ve been talking about in the book. So countless stories like that though, where you see, where people have a small moment of exchange when you don’t know, like, maybe they’re feeling very fragmented that day or they’re feeling isolated or lonely.

And then they see someone who smiled at them and said hello. And they’ll say later, like this small act just like change their whole day, which then changed the next day, which then helped somebody else. And I just could not be more excited about those sorts of examples.

It’s ironic when you mention this because I was actually listening to an episode of Tony Robbins and he’s telling over the weekend and he was Telling this story around a small act, a small moment that he made in a restaurant. And it was all about celebrating somebody who had given him the most amazing service, whatever the name of that particular restaurant was. And then he walks through how that small, small act of kindness essentially then asked to speak to his manager, insisted the manager give him a raise, said that he was the best survey he’d ever received. Then when he went back, they all clapped in terms of the level of service. And then he talks about the ripple effects and then the connections in terms of how it impacted his daughter. His. His daughter had. And a job opportunity in that particular restaurant later, even if she was below the age, you normally hired for that created a relationship. And so, he talks about all the ripple effects. And there were about 10 different ripple effects from that small act of kindness, including where he had a business lunch, I think it was, that he mentions and even gave it to him for free because of the impact that he had had as part of that restaurant’s family.

So just that small moment. Wow. And you choose to do something different and all of those effects. So that was just from reading over the weekend.

This is exactly the type of thing that I’ve been writing about in the book. And, you know, I had a similar one. I. This was years ago, but I had taken my children out for ice cream. We’re in the ice cream shop, and there was somebody there that was visually upset. She was crying, maybe in her young 20s. And she had been. She was borrowing the phone of the ice cream shop. And I was a little bit nervous, sort of watching her, wondering, like, is she okay? But I ended up going over and talking to her. And lo and behold, she had been living in a group home. And there was some sort of a scuffle that resulted in them telling her she needed to leave. And you could tell that she had some developmental delays and that she was really struggling, and she didn’t know where to go. And I ended up, like, sort of helping her right then and there and like, stabilizing and making some calls and helping her figure it out. And of course, the intent was not for her to leave that group home. Like, there was obviously some issues going on there.

Like she belonged there and she needed to get re plugged back in. But it was really. I was a complete stranger to her that day. And similar to your example, like, you can be a stranger, and it can be a simple thing, like, like a great service or even intervening on somebody who looks visually upset. Like, how many of us have walked by and seen somebody that looks maybe like they’re not okay. Right. And you know, you can slow down and take some, a few moments and do some small thing and then get them plugged back in where they’re looking for. And in a way they might not have been able to do it themselves. Like, we all as humans need each other, you know.

Correct. And so obviously a very powerful story from a mental health standpoint, very impactful. And I think as we’re walking out of a, of a pandemic where people felt even more isolated, there’s even less of those interactions, I would argue, these days than there was probably prior to 2020. Let’s talk about why these matters for safety, because for me it’s, it’s apparent, but there’s a very strong connection. You talked about before, the, the element of how you can change workplaces. This is an example of how you can do these small acts and how it can have a powerful impact in the workplace.

Yeah, I think there’s a small, a strong connection between these small acts of humanity in the workplace that result in, like, in increasing the safety that then tie back to organizations like ROI or their actual bottom line. And so, you know, bear with me. But like, when you, when you connect the dots between people feeling psychologically safe, like they’re able to be themselves at work, they can speak up, they can have healthy debate, they can still get their mission done and their voices heard and they feel like they belong. I know that I belong in this workplace and that if I’m not here, people are going to look for me and they’re going to sort of miss me not being here because my part of the mission is so critically important. For this reason. It actually buffers against a host of things like isolation, depression, loneliness, and makes the team work better in such a way that you’re less likely to have safety mishaps. You’re less likely to have presenteeism. People sort of physically present but not really present. You’re less likely to have people not fully engaged and at work. And so, I do think that there’s a close connection to making sure that the safety system is working as it should by ensuring people feel these small acts throughout the day and that people are checked in on and that they belong and that you’re not just asking someone, is everybody okay today?

Okay, let’s get started versus like, how are you really doing? Like, tell me how you’re really doing and not just accepting that first answer. And the research shows this, like when people feel, stay quiet and they maybe have their cameras off if they’re in remote or they feel like there are, like they don’t quite belong, they don’t perform their best and then you know, there is a likelihood that you could have incidents and things that you’re not looking for in the workplace.

And I think what you’re talking about one for my mental health well-being, at the end of the day safety is still human. That yes, you can put in a lot of controls, you can put a lot of elements to prevent error from having a consequence. But in most workplaces if you’re not well, your attention is not on the job. When you even talked about presenteeism, you’re not necessarily assessing risks in the way that you should be looking at risk because there’s a different element of risk tolerance as well that can come in which can be very dangerous from a safety standpoint. There’s clearly a link from a mental health well-being and ultimately a safety outcome. But there’s also the element I would say from all the research in the safety space is this element of active care. The leader who shows active care for their team members is you’re going to get in return somebody willing to do more, show up at a different level and do things better from a safety standpoint. So, I think it really connects to active care from a safety standpoint. But also, this element of well-being is key to safety outcomes.

Right. Like it’s the foundation. Right. I always used to think back in the day we would come up with these things for military commanders, and they were like call the commander’s checklist. We would have a checklist for everything. Right. And of course that’s the way the military is bred. Like the pilots have their checklist and for all the right reasons, like we’ve got to make sure that safe and that we’re following the checklist. But we would have policies and then we would train the troops and the, and our civilian personnel like to the policy, and we do all of these things to get the system working well. Sure. Critically important. I wouldn’t tell you to stop having policies and you know, eliminate training. But I would tell you equally important is like do they know one another? Like are they connected? Do they know one another by name? Do they know the names of one’s family members and how special that feels when people say how’s Susie? Or how’s Johnny? I know you just finished third grade and summer’s coming. The idea of human connection is equally as important as that policy document that we push through at work.

And I would say, particularly even with elite teams like Navy seals, et cetera, you would want to have that very tight bond because they’re, they need to rely on each other, trust each other. But the same applies in the workplace, I think so.

And, you know, we, we talk a lot as well with like, first responders and the likelihood of people asking for help when they need it, after they’ve been exposed. In some of these workplaces where they get exposed to trauma, when they feel connected and they feel like they belong and they’re in and they’re not going to be judged, they’re also more likely to raise their hand and say, I need help. I just saw this incredibly, you know, traumatic thing and, and it doesn’t mean I’m out of the fight or I no longer belong here. It just means I need a little help. I need some peer support. So, I do think it’s at that, like, as you described with Active Care, it’s at the foundation for all the other things that workplaces can do to make sure people feel safe and create environments that are safe too.

And ultimately, to me, that’s one of the key pieces’ leaders have to make safety personal. And making a safety personal is talking about with vulnerability. Why safety matters to me as a leader, but also for frontline team members. If I don’t know who’s on my team, who they’re staying safe for, so it could be their kids, I don’t know what’s happening in that environment. You’re not going to get people showing up in that particular way. And yes, we can hope that one day we can eliminate all hazards. We can control every single hazard. But until that day, there’s still humans making choices and decision that can get in harm’s way.

This episode of the Safety Guru podcast is brought to you by Propulo Consulting, the leading safety and safety culture advisory firm. Whether you are looking to assess your safety culture, develop strategies to level up your safety performance, introduce human performance capabilities, re-energize your BBS program, enhanced supervisory safety capabilities, or introduce unique safety leadership training and talent solutions. Propulo, has you covered. Visit us at propolo.com

Yes, and I was, you know, thinking too about our conversations about safety issues in the workplace just around like, the basics of like, filing a report. And, you know, I’ve worked a lot in healthcare and of course we do this as well in healthcare systems. And just this notion of small acts around, like, really closing the loop. So, like, we might think that we’re closing the loop by, like, doing the necessary administrative actions and we might think that we’re closing the loop by, like, you know, giving a brief after the fact to tell people the lessons learned and, you know, bringing the teams together and, you know, this is what happened with this spill or this incident. But in fact, like, closing the loop with the people one on one.

Like, I noticed you saw this at work, you know, on a last Tuesday. You know, I know we’re doing the administrative part of it, but what was that like for you? Like, actually, like checking in and truly closing the loop with people. Because these incidents, they don’t just particularly the ones I’ve been exposed to. I know not all safety is traumatic in nature, but they don’t just disappear from their mind. Like, they’re not just gone. They stay with them and be a part of who they are. So, I think the more we really close the loop and make sure that folks are truly okay, the better we’ll do as organizations. Organizations, right.

So, what can leaders do? What. What are some of the things they can do to create this environment with people encouraged to do these small acts of kindness?

You know, it’s such a good question because I spent a lot of time, you know, thinking about specific actions that leaders can do. And on the one hand, you might think that I’m going to tell you these, like, grand big things, and I wish that were the case because. But it’s not. Most of what I will share with you, you will be surprised how simple, basic, and easy it is, and one we’ve already talked about. And it’s just. I call it like, asking the second question. So, it’s the question that you ask when you say, how are you? And then they say, fine, thanks. And then you have to come back with, like, no, really, how are you? I know you said you’re fine, but, like, I see this. Or, you know, like, really, like, ask the second question.

Sure.

And then I say also, like, notice when people are slightly different or when they go quiet. And this is hard. And I think you and I’ve talked about this in telework environments, like, when people are virtual. Like, you have to notice when they turn off their camera. You have to notice when they’re quiet when they’re normally not. And then you have to know that withdrawal is actually, you know, it’s a safety signal when. When people disengage or they withdraw. Like, put that in your little. In you. In your wrist dial as, like, a safety. A safety signal because they’re less engaged. Sure. And it’s a data point for you as A leader. The other one I would tell you is, you know, we have a tendency, and I’ve been guilty of this over the years, like you have. There’s such a push on, like getting the mission done. So, you’re like, let’s get our teams together. Let’s, let’s get on track. What’s our agenda? Let’s move out. I’m trying to be, and I challenge leaders today, more purposeful with hearing the junior people first on our teams.

Yep, very powerful. Yes.

How do we know where the rubber meets the road if we don’t slow down and listen? And it’s so quick to like, turn to the senior people in the room who of course have the most experience. And probably, you know, you want your input from your best people. But there is something to be said in terms of a culture of belonging when you just turn to the youngest, newest person on the team and you sort of ask them, how is it going out there? You know, you’re, you’re on the front lines share and like, really model that everybody needs to listen to the most junior person. So, I think that’s like a tactical, easy thing. And the other, I, you know, the other thing I can, that I wrote about in the book is like using feedback as a place for connection. And so, like when leaders are giving feedback, they’re giving it in such a way that, where you’re building a relationship that that stays intact and that it’s not like a quick system of accountability, you know, I gave Mr. Smith feedback today and now I can check that box. I developed a relationship with Mr. Smith today and based on that relationship, we’re working on this together and I’m, I’m part of helping him work on that.

So, I just think there’s a number of things. The last thing I would tell you is about transitions and this, I learned this in healthcare. But I’d be curious what you think as well. On non healthcare organizations, periods of transition are high risk. So, like when someone first gets a job, it’s a high risk. Time they’re new, when they’re off boarding into retirement, that’s a high risk in healthcare. When they’re moving between parts of the healthcare system, there’s a propensity that they could fall through the cracks.

Makes sense.

So, I just say we should think about these periods of transition within organizations, like when we’re going through large change management, when we’re moving people from one team to the next. And I would say reach out before they end up having an issue. So how do we study or dig in during periods of transition in a better way within our organizations.

And if I may, I would think that transition also could be. If you’re aware of who’s on your team, those transitions could also be personal.

Having a baby, having a divorce.

Correct. Yeah.

Things that, that could impact.

You’re right.

Distractions that could maybe introduce new risk or maybe introduce a better cause to stay safe. And I think it’s part of that element of the more I know you, the more I know what’s going on with you, then I can check in and say what, what, maybe you look tired today.

Yes.

And, and using that as a, as a component, I would agree when somebody isn’t typically and I’ve seen some variability on these stats, but new enroll typically has higher injury risk. As you’re still trying to understand the tasks, you’re still trying to understand how to fit into the, into the culture and you may not necessarily know the hazards you haven’t been trained for then. The other part is what I’ve seen, and this varies is it’s either late in career or what I’ve seen in some instances was actually late in career in the years prior to your ability to retire. And those who could retire and who stayed on very different driver because many of them wanted to be there, there was a different motivation versus I can now check out and leave, right?

Yeah. I can’t say enough about these periods of transition. I appreciate you bringing up the ones that go on personal because it’s like at the micro and the ma periods of transition for us as an organization, but periods of transition for all the people that are in that organization as well. And how do we pay more attention to those as periods of vulnerability for us as safety leaders and really zone in on them? An interesting stat that I, that I wrote about in the book has to do with caregiving that I think many, many leaders may not know. One third of the nation is right now engaged in caregiving either for parents that are aging or I don’t just mean parenting, like regular parenting is not in the caregiving stats. But I mean special needs sort of caregiving for, you know, chronically ill children, special needs children or catastrophically wounded veterans, traumatic brain injury and the like. When you put all of those together, that’s a lot. Yes. Chances are if you’re running a team of 100 people, 33 or so of them are probably involved in caregiving. And that’s also a period of transition.

Like, okay, now I’m responsible for making sure that grandma Gets her medicine and that she’s supervised and not, you know, walking the neighborhood with, you know, early onset dementia or the like. And so that will play itself out in our work environments if. And the more that we can tend to that in a proactive way, the better.

And it goes back to knowing, understanding your team, understanding what’s going on, acts of kindness in terms of connecting with them. But also, there’s an impact when I think of safety, there’s a direct impact on these things around fatigue, which we know is a precursor to many injuries. Distractions, which we know is a precursor to many injuries. Are all of these items can increase your propensity to have an injury or do something that you shouldn’t have done. And so even just that awareness, I think I shared last time with you, this story of I thought was really powerful. It was a supervisor who noticed that one of the operators that was going to use a very heavy piece of machinery on the shift looked a little bit different because he knew what she normally looks like and had a general sense that something was a little bit off. She was a little bit distracted that day. So, he just went and checked in, how are you doing? And she opened up and said, well, actually I lost my home last night. I was evicted and we slept on the street.

Wow.

And because of that, obviously he was able to remove her from the high-risk equipment machinery. Realizing this is not the right thing. But that requires you to know your team.

Yes.

That requires the culture to encourage this. Right. So, leaders above that, to create those acts of kindness so that it becomes an expectation across the organization.

So true. Small little things and paying attention to your gut when you see those small little things. This leader, in this example that you described, say nothing had happened to that employee the night before. And that leader sent something a little bit and went over and checked. And if they were okay, that would have been okay.

Yeah, absolutely.

In fact, it would have felt really good. As the person that’s about to do this, like, heavy equipment role, that somebody on my team was really checking on me before I did it like that, that would have felt so good to me if I were that employee. And if they were okay, that’s. That, that, that’s terrific. But in the slight chance that they’re not and you as the leader is able to make that intervention, pull them off the line, put somebody else in, that’s in a good spot. Not in a punitive way, of course, but in a caring way. And, you know, and, and like, let’s talk like, come let’s go sit down or and if you as the leader, because I always hear this from leaders, they just don’t have time there. In many cases, leading large, huge teams and like, you don’t have time to sit and have coffee with every single employee. But we can sometimes find a peer who can. And as a leader, you can talk to them for as much time as you have, but then you can also set them up with somebody else and continue to stay involved as a touch point, like I just say, like, use other people as force multipliers in such a way that you’re like building peer support as part of the culture and really having people help people.

So, my key takeaways are one, you want the frontline leaders to have that sense of active care to check in doing these little acts. You want peers to do the same with each other, which creates, if you created that environment where it’s now the norm that we’re checking out, checking in with each other and doing these small acts for each other creates a better sense of connection to the organization. For senior leaders, it’s the element of, as you do these small acts, it will have ripple effects, it will cascade, it can help influence the broader culture. So, making the time for those little things, and then the last one is really to your coffee line example is we can all do it in our personal lives. We can all choose to make somebody’s day. This Tony Robbins story I shared, in terms of recognizing something above and beyond, but finding ways to connect with others and having those ripple effects.

Yes, absolutely. And I would say that like some of these things that we’ve talked about today that are small acts are likely some of the easily accessible and most important acts. And I know I’m a little bit biased, but these are the things that will create the foundation for all of the other things to go well.

Right. So, your book, the Human Cure, How Small Acts Can Change the World. Tell me a little bit about that book. And I’m assuming people can pick it up on Amazon or in any bookstore.

Yes, on Amazon or Barnes and Noble and the like. Yes. So, the book, like I said, is very much focused on small, basic things that people can do every day. And what I was able to do was pull together a career worth of lessons in the field of mental health, but also interview a number of people, researchers, very senior leaders, and get some of their takeaways and their lessons for things around empathy, compassion, peer support, even using storytelling as a way to, you know, bring healing within families and organizations. And then I pulled the thread on the latest research on this. So really looking at the science around this and how it connects to improved health outcomes, improved team outcomes, sort of larger. The book goes from micro to macro and sort of everything in between. So, it’s been two years in the making. I’ve, you know, it’s been a fun journey and at the same time grueling. And I’m just super excited to get it out there, get some feedback from people on it and really make sure people know that it’s everyday small things in our power that can make the biggest difference.

Excellent. Well, Keita, thank you so much for joining the show again. Really appreciate your story and definitely will be picking up a copy of your book.

Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate it as well. And all the work that you’re doing to raise awareness on safety issues. I love watching your work unfold as well.

Excellent. Thank you.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Dr. Keita Franklin is a nationally recognized public health leader and senior executive with more than 25 years of experience advancing large-scale systems change across federal and healthcare sectors. Her work has focused on suicide prevention, behavioral health, substance use, and the integration of public health approaches within complex organizations.

Dr. Franklin spent the majority of her career in senior executive roles within the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), where she served as the principal advisor on suicide prevention and behavioral health policy. In these roles, she led multidisciplinary teams responsible for advancing evidence-based prevention strategies impacting more than three million active-duty service members, 20 million veterans, and their families. She is widely credited with helping shift the VA’s suicide prevention efforts from a primarily medical model toward a comprehensive public health approach that emphasized prevention, community engagement, and upstream risk reduction.

A recognized expert in suicide prevention and public health leadership, Dr. Franklin serves as Co-Director of the Columbia Lighthouse Project, where she leads national and international efforts to support the implementation and dissemination of evidence-based suicide risk screening protocols across healthcare, community, and organizational settings.

After transitioning to the private sector, Dr. Franklin has held senior leadership roles across the healthcare industry. She currently serves as Vice President of Health Care Strategy at TriWest Healthcare Alliance, where she leads strategic initiatives to advance whole-person care, behavioral health integration, and innovative solutions that improve outcomes for veterans, service members, and communities nationwide.

Dr. Franklin holds a PhD in Social Work from Virginia Commonwealth University and an advanced certificate from the Center for the Advancement of Research Methods and Analysis. She has completed executive education programs at Harvard Kennedy School in Leading Large-Scale Organizational Change and Women in Leadership, as well as the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler Business School Executive Leadership program. She is currently completing a Certificate in Executive Global Public Health Leadership at Harvard University, expected in March 2026.

An author and scholar, Dr. Franklin has published in the Journal of Alcohol Studies and the Journal of Social Work and Social Welfare Policy, with recent work examining Operation Resilience and public health approaches to suicide prevention. She has also contributed chapters to the Handbook of Military Social Work and Social Work Around the Globe. Her forthcoming books, The Humanity Cure: How Small Acts Can Change the World and A Field Practitioner’s Guide to Public Health Approaches for Suicide Prevention, will be released in 2026.

For more information: https://thehumanitycure.org/

The Humanity Cure: How Small Acts Can Change the World

RELATED EPISODE

STAY CONNECTED

The Safety Guru with Eric Michrowski

More Episodes: https://thesafetyculture.guru/

C-Suite Radio: https://c-suitenetwork.com/the-safety-guru/

Eric Michrowski: https://ericmichrowski.com

EXECUTIVE SAFETY COACHING

Like every successful athlete, top leaders continuously invest in their Safety Leadership with an expert coach to boost safety performance.

Safety Leadership coaching has been limited, expensive, and exclusive for too long.

Unlock your full potential with the only Executive Safety Coaching for Ops & HSE leaders available on the market.

Explore your journey with Executive Safety Coaching at https://www.execsafetycoach.com.

Prepare for the Unexpected: Leadership and Safety Lessons from an Offshore Explosion with Lee Ellis

Apr 30, 2026

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE:

ABOUT THE EPISODE

In this powerful episode of The Safety Guru, Lee Ellis from Proud2BSafe shares his firsthand experience of a catastrophic offshore explosion in 2020, involving a commercial fishing vessel off the UK coast, and the critical leadership and safety lessons that emerged from it. Through vivid storytelling, he takes us into the heart of the crisis, revealing what it truly means to prepare for the unexpected. Drawing from this life-altering event, Lee explores essential lessons in safety leadership under pressure, risk identification and mitigation, and the true value of recurring training—not just completing it but truly trusting it when it matters most. He highlights the importance of prioritizing mental health support, fostering a strong debrief culture, and providing ongoing support in the aftermath of trauma. Lee also emphasizes that exchanging experiences and knowledge across teams, along with adopting a growth mindset, is vital to strengthening safety culture and ensuring teams are truly prepared for unexpected situations. Tune in now to experience his powerful story and discover these impactful lessons, as he challenges us to move beyond routine safety practices and actively prepare for the unexpected.

READ THE EPISODE

Real leaders leave a legacy. They capture the hearts and minds of their teams. Their origin story puts the safety and well-being of their people first. Great companies ubiquitously have safe yet productive operations. For those companies, safety is an investment, not a cost. For the C suite, it’s a real topic of daily focus. This is the Safety Guru with your host, Eric Michrowski, a globally recognized ops and safety guru, public speaker and author. Are you ready to leave a safety legacy? Your legacy success story begins now.

Hi and welcome to the Safety Guru. Today I’m very excited to have with me Lee Ellis. He’s an offshore maritime professional who’s going to share with us today a pretty exceptional story about an incident at sea and some of the learnings from it. Lee, welcome to the show. Excited to have you with me.

Thank you very much, Eric.

So, Lee, why don’t you start out with your story and what happened in, in that, that day in 2020?

Yeah. So, I was working on a service operations vessel on off of the east coast of the Uk supporting wind farm operations. We were doing service and maintenance and on this particular day, there’s nothing significantly different about it. It was quite a bright, sunny December day. It was quite pleasant. But we were involved as a, as a craft with the, an incident involved a fishing vessel by the name of Gal wadi Moore, which has had a catastrophic underwater explosion. So, it started as a regular day for our wind farm. The SOV was called the Sag Nord. So, we had part Norwegian crew, part Dutch crew, part Danish crew. Sorry. And then UK resident technicians and a nice mix of general different nationalities now on board, all working together. So, yeah, on this day, just gone past 11:00am, cool, bright sunny morning, as I said, December 15th and there was a very loud bang. I was in my office on the operations, in the operations management office on board the vessel.

Yep.

And yes, the air fell silent for a few seconds after this bang and then all of a sudden there was quite a lot of commotion in the changing room which was located right next door. A lot of the crew members were rushing into the, the rescue equipment locker. And then my desk phone started to ring. It was the vessel captain, and he was calling to let me know that they just received a mayday call from the fishing boat and it was located approximately three, three miles away from, from us from our current location at that point in time to the north of our position. So just a little bit out of the wind farm and that the SOV itself was going to deploy its fast rescue boat and its fast transfer vessel, which are Two small rib type craft with three, three crew on each, driver, navigator and an assistant person, rescue person, if you will. And they were going to go to the location to assist where possible with this news. I called all the, for all the work within the wind farm to be stopped immediately. And so, we did have a couple of teams out on locations already.

At that point they had to play deployed on two different turb. So, I gave them a shout on the radio and also to the control room, put a full stop work order on the whole wind farm, everybody to just stop what they’re doing, go to their nearest safe place within the wind farm or within their wind turbines and just take a break and wait for further news. We also deployed, we had a, a small service vessel, transfer vessel with us as well. Kind of moderate size, twin catamaran hull. She could carry up to 12 people. And I deployed her out to go sit with two teams between their turbines so they can provide support facilities if they want to go back on board, use the toilet facilities, stuff like that, or fresh water supply. They were there available for them.

Sure.

Until we knew, you know, if we needed any additional resource, we knew where to find them. But for the meantime, they’re in a safe place. So, once they must have in the safe areas and received the messages back, we started to receive more information from the fast boats that were seen at the scene of the vessel, the fishing vessel, where the explosion had taken place. And they’re in the process at that point of rescuing all seven of the fishing boat crew. Some of these crew members were in very serious condition. So, to put it into context, the skipper, he was in, he received in the wheelhouse at the time, he actually had three broken vertebrae.

Wow.

Broken cracked sternum and orbital bone and significant knee injuries. The first deckhand let’s find him. He, he was a fractured skull, fractured pelvis, arm, ribs and toes and a ruptured bladder.

Wow.

The second deckhand had a broken leg, damaged knees, damaged knees and elbow and a punctured lung. The third deck had the deck hand. My apologies. He had significant eye injuries, plate to cranium fracture. So, it’s skull fracture and loss of sight in one eye. The fourth deckhand, he had minor injuries to his shoulder, ankles, knees, neck and back where he’d been thrown around in the blast. The fifth deckhand just had minor cuts and bruises. He was the guy who was on deck of the vessel, fishing vessel at the time. He kind of got thrown in the air and landed back on his feet and then fell over. So, he had Minor injuries. And then there was the night watchman who was in below decks. He was being the night watchman. He was asleep in his bunk, and he got thrown clear of his bunk. So, he was in the prone position in the upper bunk. He had a broken leg, broken hip and a broken shoulder where he was thrown out of his bunk completely. So fairly substantial significant injuries there. And yeah, so it was quite a quite difficult time for dealing with those casualties as they were coming back to the vessel.

So, everyone who wasn’t directly involved in the running of the critical vessel operations, we assembled them out on the back of the rear deck where the fast boats are recovered back to the, the main service operations vessel. And we made it into a; the deck area became a triage basically for the administration of first aid and pain relief. So, on board the vessel as well as having the, the basic first aid training that we all have to do to go offshore, we also had a vessel medic. We had an independent medic on board as well for being in farm paramedic grade medic with us who had been doing additional training on days when we weren’t able to work. He would give us an additional first aid training lessons and progressed our first aid level skills up to an advanced level.

Sure.

To the point where we could administer a pain relief in the form of a drug called Pentorex, which is an oral, oral pain relief. It’s like a little cylinder capsule. You pop the capsule and you take it like an inhaler. But it’s quite a strong, potent pain relief which we would been trained to use. So, he was out there as well. So he was, he was organizing the triage. Basically, we set up accidental emergency on the back of an offshore vessel. So it was, it was quite an interesting, interesting morning at that point. So, as well as controlling things in the wind farm, I was also hands on with the. Administering first aid to both the fishing boat skipper and the second deckhand. I, I did the bandaging of the skipper’s legs. So, I actually saw his, his bone, his shin bones.

Wow.

Where he had been thrown in the wheelhouse. His shins and his knees had taken out the counter console of the wheelhouse itself, and it basically skinned his shins on both legs. So try to patch him back up as best we could just so that he was able to transit back to shore at that point. Right. The other guys had the other, more, more serious casualties out on deck on, on stretchers and spine boards and we’re administering additional pain relief to them as well. Obviously, the Paramedic and the, the ship second officer were far more highly trained. They could administer more different pain reliefs that they had available to them. So, they were going through those and putting IV drips and stuff in as well. So yeah, it was quite a significant time.

And do we know what happened that caused that explosion?

Yes, we do. So, there was after the event a few, a few months later, well, the vessel was towed back to shore and assessed. She didn’t sink. Surprisingly she did take on water, but she didn’t sink. There was significant, the significant damage throughout the vessel. The, the hole was rippled as well. The bulkheads had moved; the engine mountains had moved by six inches. It actually shifted the whole engine inside the vessel off of its engine mountains in, in the, in the depths of the. The hull.

Wow.

But yeah, she was actually token back to hull in, in Yorkshire to a maritime yard there and assessed by the maritime agency. And it was determined that it was a Second World War bomb that had been caught crabbing. That. Yeah, yeah. But it’s not as crazy as you might think and I’ll get onto that bit in a minute. This is, yeah, she, she dragged up. They reckon It’s a 250-kilo bomb damage that they assessed it to be and then they did send down a, a dive robot a few, a few months later and they found fragments. There were also fragments in one of the pots, the crabbing pots that remained on the seabed where it parted the line and they found pieces of that. So, it was significant physical evidence to say exactly what it was. And they reckon it was a, say a 250 kilo German Second World War bomb. But yeah, so due to the unfortunate events of that day and being a completely random nature, but it’s still estimated, you say about the bomb, about a hundred thousand tons of unexploded bombs in and around the UK waters.

So, 100,000.

100,000 tons. Yeah.

That makes it risky to do anything that touches the.

Whoa. Yeah.

Deep water surface.

Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it’s, you know, it’s a, it’s a real big.

It’s.

They, they still pull stuff up all the time. Occasionally the fishing boats will pull up an old sea mine or something like that and you hear of the lifeboat, or a naval vessel will go out, and minesweeper will go out and try and deal with it or they’ll locate it. Things get dragged up and then they get destroyed by the bomb disposal. Whether it be depends on where it sits as well on the shoreline. If it’s higher than the tide mark, then the army have to deal with it. If it’s lower than the tide mark, then the navy will drag it out to see him and make a big water splash. So. But yeah, there’s a lot of it out there still, especially around the east coast, obviously, because it was closest to mainland Europe. So, yeah, so there’s a lot of that out there.

Wow. So, in this example, how, how would you characterize leadership under pressure? Because you, you were in a routine day, or what appeared to be a routine day until about 11am and in, in a high-pressure environment, how do you prepare for this type of decision making?

You have to rely on your training. And there’s no, there’s no specific training for that scenario, sure, no, and there probably never will, but you can always, you can always maybe surmise it may happen, but the risk factor is very minimal. But in the offshore renewables and in the offshore industry on a whole, it’s always about the training of what you, you prepare for the worst conditions is it particularly a high-risk environment. And so, there’s a lot of time, you know, it’s all about having good risk identification and mitigation factors. And it’s the same with a lot of land-based industries. You, you train to identify what is the potential risk to yourself, your team, your crew and also in the environment. And this, however, being at sea is purely complicated by that fact that you are isolated and well away from regular emergency services. You’ve got no fire, you’ve got no ambulance, you do have helicopters and we do have helicopter support from shore. The, the Coast Guard agency in the UK have interspersed helicopters around the UK coastline. But again, where you are in the North Sea, you could be an hour away from one of those.

We were, we were 45 minutes at the outset and that was a direct flight to us. And he was, he was hightailing as fast as he could in a large rescue helicopter and that was still 45 minutes away. So, you know, you are isolated, so you have to deal and you have to be prepared as best you can. Anybody who goes offshore has to be trained in the basics of emergency firefighting, first aid, management of control of certain situations as well. So, you do those as undertakings, but then you progress and you learn, you take as many more additional trainings as you can over periods of time. You, you basically, you increase and advance your portfolio, and you also add experiences into that. So, in this situation, although unprepared for it, having never faced an explosion before, it’s a case of, well, what Can I deal with and how can I deal with it? And it’s. So, it was a case of us. You’ve got to keep calm. It’s first, first and foremost in any situation, at any management level, you’ve got to keep calm and look at the facts and see what it is you’re actually dealing with.

And what can you do to help and aid that situation or make things better or make improvements. You get the rescue parties moving as fast as you can. Which was dealt with in this situation by, by the vessel crew, by the captain on the bridge. He sent out his rescue teams on their fast boats. And from my side of things, for managing my personnel that I was directly responsible for, it was to make sure that the initial teams I had out, as I said before, they, I made sure they went to a safe place and they stopped work so they couldn’t come to any further harm of what they were doing. The turbine that they were working on was shut down. There was still power available. They still had, they had food and water, and they had a support vessel there for other needs that was necessary. You could ask why, why didn’t they just get on that support vessel and sit there all day? But actually, if it’s quite a bit, if there’s a little bit of lump or swell out there and you’re not that well-seasoned a maritime traveler, a wind turbine is actually a far more stable place to be than traveling around on a boat all day.

So, you know, some of the lads do have to deal with seasickness. They’re quite happy sitting on a big boat because that doesn’t move so much. But they don’t want to sit there all day, Bobb, if they don’t have to. So, they’d much rather be in a more comfortable situation on the turbine. So, so yes, there’s other things you have to deal with, but basically, it’s, it’s to keep a cool, calm and collective head about yourself and deal with each thing as you come across it.

So, so there’s an element of also being prepared for the unexpected. I think that that, that comes through from your story because I think in most trades, we tend to assume the best possible outcome. And as you said, there’s conditions. It’s a little bit like when you’re in the, when you’re in the air for pilot or if you’re at sea, you’ve got to be self-sufficient and find your way through whatever is happening in front of you because of that extended distance. I’ve been to many offshore wind onshore wind farms. But I can’t fathom to imagine the exponential difference in risk when you’re offshore and you’re dealing with the same wind farms.

Yeah. I mean between being on the actual wind turbine, the risk is exactly the same. That part it’s all, it’s all about the getting to and from. It’s, it’s about that element of working at sea and in, in high-risk environments like the offshore renewable industry, you have to build, you have to build your culture daily risk awareness and it’s all about the good safety culture. So, the development along with the training, you develop a good safety culture. It’s something that every company wind farm site strives to achieve and maintain, and it takes the involvement of all parties. So right from every new visitor that starts on site, they have to start with a thorough site induction as well as the site induction. You do a safety induction, you go through all the relevant toolboxes talk talks, incidents that have happened, recent historical facts with the safety related within the wind farm. Along with that initial induction. The team, if they’re going out, will have pre-sale briefings. So again, you’re looking at the reef risk factors again and the toolbox talk as well. You’ve got to have a toolbox talk every day before you do anything.

Regardless of what industry are onshore, offshore.

Yeah.

In America, maritime, aviation. All the same, everybody has a toolbox talk periodically as well to make that safety culture long standing and get the buy in of everybody you’re looking for. We do safety focused stand down days and stuff like that and team building days designed to make sure that everybody you know is, is both fully engaged and comfortable and confident in identifying the, and discussing and reporting on positive and negative safety issues and risk jobs used in this way that creates a very productive safety culture which should you know, part the way for everybody having a safe and productive but everybody coming home safely at the end of the day. And that’s the number one most important thing.

This episode of the Safety Guru podcast is brought to you by Propulo Consulting, the leading safety and safety culture advisory firm. Whether you are looking to assess your safety culture, develop strategies to level up your safety performance, introduce human performance capabilities, re-energize your BBS program, enhance supervisory safety capabilities, or introduce unique safety leadership training and talent solutions. Propulo has you covered. Visit us at propolo.com

and there’s also, I hear in your story a lot of elements of recurring recurrent training as well. Right. So, what you were talking about in terms of the medic it’s not okay I’m qualified with first aid, it’s how do I continue to upskill while we’ve got some downtime so that my skills are prepared for an unexpected event like what happened that day.

Yeah, absolutely. With, with any training it’s always about keeping it fresh as well and doing. You have, as I mentioned, the basic periodical trainings that everybody has to go offshore. They call them the GWOs, the global wind Industry Organization trainings which covers your fire awareness and those, all the basics, that’s fine, you repeat them every couple of years at a training college but in the meantime it’s expanding on those skills and making yourself a better training portfolio for yourself and making your skills sets fresh. And as you mentioned, the paramedic on board, he was an ex British army paramedic. Absolutely lovely guy. But he was, he was adamant that if we had days when we weren’t doing a lot because the weather was too bad, we were training with him. He, he didn’t, you know, you couldn’t go down to the games room and play computer games. No, no. Today we’ve got a training session and we would do two or three hours of advanced first aid to the point where he pushed it and to his credit, absolute credit and on this occasion he, he pushed us through to doing our advanced first aid certificates and we were under him to do advanced first aid which is, it’s maybe a two, one or two steps below UK paramedic level.

Certainly, it’s like an ambulance technician level where you’re able to do the splinting, a lot of the traction stuff, putting into baskets, putting, preparing for spine boarding. We also went to the level where we could give minimal pain relief in the form of the Penford, which is, it’s like an oral inhaled pain relief which is what we’re permitted to do. So. Yeah, so you know, you can never stop learning and the training is, is valid and significant but it’s, it’s very well and good doing it in the two-year cycle. But if, if you don’t keep up those periods of training more often and keep it fresh in your mind and things become stale and stagnant and you forget.

So yeah, it also takes a mindset around training to maximize the value to, from a growth mindset to also say how do I get to the best version of myself from a safety standpoint because I can pay attention to training, soak it up or assume it will never happen to me.

Yes, definitely. And with these sort of things it’s Very easy to, to say, oh yeah, you do that when you speak to the new guys I mentioned before, you have to the new, a new visitor or a new technician comes to the site and you say well what advice would I give them? And my advice would be quiet, quiet, quite short and simple to them really. It’s never stop learning and sharing that knowledge. If you, if you’ve had experience with things, these industries from people, you go further through life. You meet different people who come from different walks of life. They’ve done different things. They may have ex-military backgrounds, they may have done, worked around the world. Me personally, I came to this industry from a brief spin stint in oil and gas. Before that I was working in factories. So, I’ve seen things and done things and been involved in general life. You know, people, people experience things in their lives different to everybody else. And the best thing you can do is share that experience. If you’ve seen something done better or you’ve experienced that some somewhere else, share it with a guy who hasn’t.

You know, you may have done a training course, but the knowledge more often comes from, from that experience. And so, it’s always best to try and learn from that as well. Whether that comes from, you know, an experienced colleague sharing a story on something or from something that you’ve actually witnessed yourself. You know, maybe you, you were first to witness a car accident or something like that. You’ve had to do first aid. I mean it’s, they’re not nice situations and you never really learn from a nice situation. That’s the unfortunate thing about life in general, you know, so, you know, but don’t ever be afraid to share that knowledge and, and that experience or ask for that knowledge and experience if you know, somebody’s got a little bit of a history in that. So, know what, how have you dealt with this situation? What have you seen before? What’s your backstory? You know, get to know your colleagues on a boat, it’s a lot easier because you sit around in the evening watching telly and chat, just chatting the day away. Some of the guys that we used to share the boat with, they were xref for, for a start.

So, they’d been to some of them in both the Iraq campaigns and stuff like that. One guy was ex-army, he’d been in Bosnia, things like this, you know, significant military background and you can learn a lot from them. But some of it’s really scary but the experience is still valid. So yeah, it’s a shared knowledge that helps you build your experience. Not your personal experience, but it can help you with how you would deal with a situation.

And I think one thing that struck me when we first talked about your story is also the element of mental health, but also the debrief that occurred the day after. So rather than run back to work, when all was said and done and everybody was back on the sov, you didn’t jump right back into work. Tell me a little bit about how you handle mental health, but also the debrief that’s so important after an event like this.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the debrief started pretty much after the last helicopter had taken the last significant casualty off of the. Off the boat, and we were starting to return back to actually go and pick up ours. Our stranded team members who were back in the wind farm where we’d sailed away to do the helicopter operations. At that point, it was about an hour and a half sail back to the wind farm, and we kind of all just sat around in a bit. A little bit of a state of shock, if you will, just trying to process. Yeah, everybody’s trying to process. Nobody really said a lot. Everything was just trying to process personally, what on earth just happened. You know, there’s that big question mark you might go, did we do the right thing? Didn’t we do the right thing? Have we. Have we done what we best we could have? We could. We’ve done it better. And it’s like, okay, that’s fine. Everybody will ask those questions. And that. That is your own mental health to his tea. Sure. But what we did when we got everybody back on board, because we debriefed the guys when they came back on board as well.

And we got everybody up. We went to the anchor ground, and we got everybody up from the crew and everybody who was involved up on. In. In the bridge. It’s a large bridge area. There was about 50 of us in total, all stood up there in the end. And we had a general chat session, and it was led by the captain, and he was. He was talking about, you know, what happened, how. How we go about dealing with the situation. What do we think? Palm reflection? How do we think we were. Things went. And it was. It was kind of. It’s a bit of a strange one. So, the captain, when we all stood up there initially, we all gathered up there and the captain broke the silence and he gave a brief recount of the whole event, which he’d taken from his ship’s log directly. And then he personally praised every one of us for professionalism and the collaboration with the rescue effort, you know, with the guys who went out on fast boats. We helped them get the, the casualties off. Everybody mucked in with the helicopter, helicopter operations. And then we started to open up conversations and, and just talking about the things, how we were involved, what we did, where we were, what we were doing.

And just kind of a little bit of a breakdown analysis. Not too in depth but just kind of post incident. And then in the following days after that there were individual and group counseling sessions that were offered to everybody. We didn’t go back to work the following day. Certainly not. There was a couple of days actually we didn’t get back to work. It was just best just we were in a good position with the wind farm anyway. But that wouldn’t have mattered.

Sure.

You know, we didn’t have anything significantly broken. We were ahead of service, so it was like fine. But if that hadn’t been the case, that would have just waited. And management were really good about that. They turned around and said, you guys need to, you need to decompress, you need to take your time. We need to make sure everybody’s okay. And the mental health accent on that was really significant. And I was quite impressed with the, the company that managed that we work for on how they dealt with that. So much so that they had especially psychologists and counseling sessions. You could either do group ones; we all did group ones anyway to start with. And then they offered an extended that to individual sessions if you want to schedule them yourself, if you want to have a chat. We also, we were also having little breakout areas around the boat and just having little group chats and stuff and would go and have a coffee with one of our colleagues from the canteen or someone from the engine room. And because everybody ended up interspersed throughout the whole vessel during the incident. So, everybody was working with people they never really worked with on a day-to-day basis.

Some of the guys did have sleepless nights and it did affect them. Certainly, some of the younger lads, those who hadn’t had significant military backgrounds and things like that, maybe they weren’t. So, it’s, it’s a nasty phrase. But battle hardened, if you will, hadn’t had the experiences of traumatic experience so much so some of them were fresh out of college. So literally they’ve only ever seen was school.

Right.

So, you know, they’ve done an apprenticeship, become an engineer and thrown onto a wind turbine and that’s where they were, you know, and no face with this in their first year out from college. So yeah, absolutely. Yikes. And some of Those guys did need a little bit more support as well and that was given to them as well as best we could on the vessel. And again, with the onshore support and we actually made port on the third day. We went back and dropped a few guys off and made sure they got home. Some, some weren’t, some lived a few hundred miles away as well and they weren’t, they weren’t allowed to drive home. They were driven home and their vehicles were taken home for them. So that was quite a really nice supporting touch I thought. Or they were put onto trains, and their vehicles were arranged to be picked up or whatever means when it made necessary for them. But the ongoing from that was the long term on the mental support. It kept going. It wasn’t just when they went back to work.

Right.

That was at the end of did carry on. If you needed to talk to someone there would be a program put in place for you. And it was as you wanted it. It was a really good supporting feature of the company.

Yeah. Well Lee, tell me, thank you so much for sharing your story. I think there’s some really good learnings as well in terms of preparing for the unexpected in terms of professional orientation that happens in the, in that environment. But also, how you debrief and how all the practices to make sure that people return to work in good shape after a traumatic event like this. It’s a really, really good. Because it’s one thing to have a one-time intervention like you said, versus ongoing support recognizing that it’s a pretty traumatic event that happened.

Yeah, it certainly was. There is a, a bitter note to the end of that story unfortunately.

Okay.

So, when I presented my initial talk it was a two-day event for the company I now work for. And one of the participants in the audience, he was actually, he’s a vessel skipper, he’s a captain on one of the smaller vessels and he was actually that day he was the lifeboat skipper who came out and rescued some of the, the, the medium and minor injured personnel. The ones that weren’t helicoptered off.

Sure.

And that day I learned that even though with all our company orientated all our mental health support and everything, the captain of the fishing boat himself 18 months after the event succumbed to amount mental health insurance. So, he left behind a wife and two children. And it was because he has. Because they’re essentially, they work for themselves. So, they work for a very small, not big. The fishing industry is, is not huge, not big companies that they don’t have that kind of support or that, that and yeah, he unfortunately in the end, 18 months later, he didn’t make it.

And the others, the other six.

The others, the others certainly I’m aware that the ones with the significant life changing injuries, two of them never went back offshore again, but they are moving on with their lives. And the other three who didn’t have such significant injuries, I think they went back to fishing again. Sure.

So, thank you for sharing that. Unfortunately, that final note and it is true because there isn’t the support mechanism that exist in larger companies for industries like phishing that are highly decentralized small companies for the most part.

Yeah.

So, thank you. If somebody wants to get in touch with you, Lee, what’s the best way to do that?

Probably best to contact me through Proud to be Safe through P2Bs through the UK and they will. They will message through from this.

Excellent. Thank you so much for sharing your story.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Lee Ellis is a seasoned maritime professional and survivor of one of the UK’s most serious commercial fishing incidents in recent years. On 15 December 2020, while serving as duty operations coordinator, Lee was directly involved in the emergency response to a catastrophic underwater explosion aboard the crab potting vessel Galwad-Y-Mor, 25 miles off the Norfolk coast. The blast left the vessel severely damaged, injured multiple crew members, and triggered a complex rescue operation involving the RNLI, coastguard helicopters, and offshore support vessels.

In his powerful talk, Lee recounts the events of that day with raw honesty and vivid storytelling, using presentation visuals to help audiences understand not only the incident itself, but the split-second decisions and teamwork that followed. His session includes a 15-minute personal account that places listeners on the deck with the crew — feeling the impact, confusion, and courage required in the face of the unknown.

But Lee’s message goes far beyond the incident. He speaks to the value of training — not just attending it, but trusting it when it matters most — and the critical importance of mental health support in the aftermath of trauma. Most importantly, Lee challenges teams and individuals to think beyond routine safety: to go above and beyond in their preparation for the unexpected. Because when the unthinkable happens, it’s not just knowledge that counts — it’s mindset, readiness, and the ability to act without hesitation.

Lee’s delivery is calm, relatable, and deeply authentic — the kind of message that resonates particularly well with operational teams, offshore workers, young professionals, and anyone involved in high-risk environments. His session serves as a stark reminder of why safety training, preparedness, and emotional support aren’t just checkboxes — they’re lifelines.

For more information: https://www.p2bs.org/safety-speakers/

Explore more speakers from Proud2BSafe by clicking the image link below. They bring together a diverse network of motivational speakers with powerful lived experiences, supporting organizations on their broader safety journeys.

RELATED EPISODE

STAY CONNECTED

The Safety Guru with Eric Michrowski

More Episodes: https://thesafetyculture.guru/

C-Suite Radio: https://c-suitenetwork.com/the-safety-guru/

Eric Michrowski: https://ericmichrowski.com

EXECUTIVE SAFETY COACHING

Like every successful athlete, top leaders continuously invest in their Safety Leadership with an expert coach to boost safety performance.

Safety Leadership coaching has been limited, expensive, and exclusive for too long.

Unlock your full potential with the only Executive Safety Coaching for Ops & HSE leaders available on the market.

Explore your journey with Executive Safety Coaching at https://www.execsafetycoach.com.

From Crisis to Care: Strengthening Mental Health in the Workplace with Jessi Beyer

Mar 5, 2026

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE:

ABOUT THE EPISODE

Join us for a powerful episode exploring mental health in the workplace and practical support strategies with crisis mental health expert Jessi Beyer. In this compelling conversation, Jessi unpacks the realities of mental health challenges, particularly in high-risk and safety-critical environments. Backed by eye-opening statistics and real-world stories, she explains how these challenges directly impact performance, culture, and overall workplace safety. Jessi emphasizes the importance of building a true culture of care grounded in trust, psychological safety, and meaningful peer support. She also introduces her impactful L.I.F.E. framework for suicide prevention, offering clear, practical guidance to help leaders and teams take meaningful steps toward prevention. If you are ready to move your workplace from crisis response to proactive care, this episode delivers practical strategies to strengthen mental health and ensure every team member feels seen, supported, and valued. Tune in. This is a conversation that truly matters!

READ THE EPISODE

Real leaders leave a legacy. They capture the hearts and minds of their teams. Their origin story puts the safety and well-being of their people first. Great companies ubiquitously have safe, yet productive operations. For those companies, safety is an investment, not a cost for the C-suite. It’s a real topic of daily focus. This is the Safety Guru with your host, Eric Michrowski, a globally recognized ops and safety guru, public speaker and author. Are you ready to leave a safety legacy? Your legacy success story begins now.

Hi, and welcome to the Safety Guru. Today, I’m very excited to have with me Jessi Beyer. She’s a crisis mental health professional. Jessi, welcome to the show. Very excited to have you with me today.

Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here as well.

Let’s get started with how you got started in this space and really your passion, your motivation around it. Then we’ll get into why it’s so important.

Absolutely. So, my story started when I was 16, and my boyfriend at the time attempted suicide. He had texted me. He said, Hey, tonight’s the night. Can you come over and say goodbye? And I was like, well, I can come over and bring 911 with me. I can definitely do that. And so, I ended up calling law enforcement, calling 911. Law enforcement showed up, and he was safe. He was taken to the hospital. That story ends well. But the reason I bring this up is because there was a social worker that showed up with law enforcement. So, once they had made sure scene was safe and everything. She came in, she spoke to him for a little bit, and she handed me her card. And she told me, she’s like, hey, if you ever need anything, if you have a hard night, you can always give me a call. Understandably, that night was incredibly difficult for me. I mean, that was a teenager trying to handle life and death in a very real, very emergent way. And her card and her presence was just this little bright spot in the night for me. I did what any good 16-year-old does.

I took her business card, and I promptly I put it in the top bathroom drawer of my bathroom, and I never looked at it again. But what that card did and what that moment did was it planted this seed for me of, that was cool. I went to school, I studied psychology, undergrad, grad school. I found myself really drawn to the trauma and crisis side of the world as opposed to the private practice side of the world. I’ve always been that way. I was an EMT for a little bit. I worked in search and rescue for a little bit. I’ve always been drawn to more of those short-term interventions, a little bit of adrenaline, a little bit of crisis. That’s where I thrive. And as I was graduating grad school, I got this call from an organization that was like, hey, we’re standing up an infield crisis intervention program, and we want you to be our first, our first clinician. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I’d love to, because it was a thought in the back of my head of like, wow, wouldn’t it be cool if I could, blah, blah, blah?

But I didn’t really think it existed. And so, when they called me, I was like, I would love to. And I just had this full circle moment back to that business card in my bathroom drawer of, wow, this is funny how life turns out this way. So that’s my story. I’ve been working in this program for the past almost three years, which is really exciting to see it grow over those past couple of years. And it all started with a really, really, really terrible night in high school and a co-responder’s business card.

Wow, what a powerful story in terms of how you got started in the connection in life. We’re mostly talking to safety executives, leaders. This is a topic that’s sometimes not talked enough in the safety space. Huge levels of connections with safety. Sometimes mental health is passed on to a responsibility that belongs to HR versus safety, has to handle the safety events. Let’s start with a little bit about the stats. Why is it so important for organizations to be aware of mental health, suicide prevention, all those themes?

Mental health is something in the workplace that I think a lot of people, especially in the safety liability risk management side of things, they think it happens over there. It’s something that happens in homes, in parking lots, on sidewalks, but not in the workplace. Because when you’re working, you’re working, and you’re here to work, and you’re here to be professional, and you’re here to do all those things.

Wouldn’t that be simple?

Wouldn’t that be so nice? I think if we actually sat down with ourselves, we would recognize that that’s not the case. It doesn’t quite work that cleanly. But a lot of people are like, well, I can focus on physical risk. I can make sure there’s no hazardous chemicals spilled everywhere. I can make sure that there’s barriers, so people don’t fall off of things. You can probably tell that I’m not a physical safety expert because I don’t know what those things look like. But people talk about those things. But what they don’t recognize is that how someone is in their own head is how they also show up at work. So, a few stats to put to this. Approximately 4% of Americans consider suicide annually. And this is a It’s an actual serious consideration, not just a fleeting thought, intrusive thought type of thing. Which means that if you’re running an organization of 100 people, you’ve had four folks that came close to dying in the last year. If you’re running an organization of a thousand people, you’ve had 40. That’s a lot of humans that are really, really struggling. When someone is having a mental health concern to the level of thinking, Maybe I should die, that’s going to affect how they show up in the workplace.

Another stat that is somewhat interesting related to this is that in the US, the cost of mental illness in the workplace to employers is over 500 billion per year. This is in absenteeism, this is in loss of productivity, this is in terms of health care cost, and this is in terms of lost life potential from premature death because of suicide or depression. I bring these stats up not to say that, oh, my gosh, we only care about it because it costs us money, but to show that this is not some little, tiny thing that a few people across the country struggle with. This is something that everyday humans, every day, bring into the workplace. And that’s why it’s so important that safety managers, risk management liability, understand that because their people are struggling. I was talking to a potential client one time, and I just cold-pitched him on LinkedIn like we do. And he responded, and he’s like, well, we don’t have any mental health concerns in our organization. And I was like, okay, you have 500 people. I didn’t say this. I did not this. This was just in my head. I was like, you have 500 people on your team.

Your people are probably struggling more than you know if you’re the type of leader that thinks that they’re not struggling at all in a team of 500 people. So, food for thought for folks that are running organizations of any size, but especially organizations where those 4% statistics are going to stack up into meaningful numbers of humans. It means it’s a challenge in your workplace, even if you don’t think it is.

One thing I would add as well is if you think about what you just You mentioned the 4% considers suicide every year, a lot of safety requires a team member to have focus on task, to have attention on the work they’re doing, to be looking at risks, mitigating those risks in the work environment. If you’re not well, you’re not there in the moment present assessing all these pieces, your awareness of the risk in front of you may dramatically change.

Absolutely. It absolutely could. And that’s something where we start to see not necessarily deaths in the workplace, but accidents in the workplace that could have been prevented. If we think about this at a super, super basic level, depression as a mental illness slows everything down. Anxiety as a mental illness speeds everything up. So, if you think of a time in your life where you’ve been super anxious about something, maybe not to a clinical level, but even just in-laws are coming over, right? And you’re like, oh, my God, we got to clean the house. We got to do this. We got to do that. All these things are going on. You get a little bit You’re physically shaking a little bit, and maybe you spin around in the kitchen too quickly and knock a cup off the counter. This is a very, very mundane example, but now extrapolate that to a high-risk workplace. You spin around and knock a chemical off the counter because you’re anxious and you’re panicked about this and you’re thinking about this, and maybe it does rise to a clinical level. That’s not good from a physical safety and risk management perspective.

Conversely, on the depression side of things, everything’s slower. It’s harder to do things, to have the motivation to do things. And so now we’re moving through the workplace in a fog. We’re thinking that we’re not connecting with our coworkers. We’re not having those… I’m putting unnecessary in quotes because it’s like, what conversations can I take off my plate to reduce mental load? But we’re not having those conversations with colleagues about, hey, did you do this? Did you check this? Let me double check this. Again, that’s where we start to see these accidents in the workplace. I’m, of course, not saying that every accident in the workplace is caused by mental illness. That’s way too much of a stretch. But those types of concerns of mental health challenges of depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, those can have very real translations into increased accidents in the workplace.

Are there some sectors that introduce more risks? Because one of the things that I’ve historically heard is a lot of the fly-in/fly-out type of operation where there isn’t necessarily stability in the home environment because you’re gone for potentially a week or two weeks at a time, more at risk. Certain types of professions, like construction where you could be on the road for extensive periods of time, also increase the risk? Are there some other industries like that that would have maybe a higher risk around suicide or mental health challenges?

Absolutely. This is such a good question. And to answer this fully, I’m going to zoom out and look at this from a societal lens. So, yes, certain professions are definitely at a higher risk. Broadly speaking, your high trauma careers, so your military first responder types, those are going to have higher rates of mental health challenges, specifically suicide, as well as a lot of your more blue-collar type professions. So, construction is consistently at the top of that list of professions that have high risk of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts and suicide deaths, everything on that spectrum, as well as a lot of your food type industries, your agriculture, your forestry. A lot of those blue collar, traditionally lower wage professions are the ones that have high suicide rates. On the other end of that spectrum, your finance, your business, things like that, they have generally a bit lower suicide rates. And when I’m referencing higher and lower, it’s in reference to the national average. Sure, exactly. So, the national average is measured as per 100,000 people, higher or lower than that. It’s what we’re talking about here. And there’s some different professions that are weighted by genders.

So, it’s like, male of this profession has a higher suicide rate than female of the… Things like that. But in general, those are the trends. And if we zoom out and look at why, you started hinting that. But in order to have a full happy, healthy life, in order to be a fully healthy human, we look at not just what is your physical health or even what is your mental health, but we look at social determinants of health. We look at your social relationships. We look at your financial stability. We look at your ability to keep a roof over your head. We look at all of these different things. And it’s interesting because I took a class recently on suicide forensic autopsies, which is basically the practice of if someone passes away, likely suicide, doing an investigation into the few months before their death to learn about what is contributed to that death and how organizations or families or societies can change things to prevent similar deaths in the future. Really, really interesting. But we spent six hours talking about all the different risk factors for suicide. And if I had to sum it up in one sentence, the one sentence would be, the worse your life is, the more likely you are to consider suicide.

And so, in a lot of these professions, we see things Exactly like you were talking about. Inconsistent social relationships because you’re constantly changing crews, changing jobs, moving here, moving there. We see some financial instability. You have periods of I’m working a ton. There’s a ton of construction. Oh, God, I can’t find a job. Now I’m on unemployment. Now I’m worried about how I’m going to pay my bills. I’m getting food from the local organizations that are giving it away instead of being able to buy it. Maybe I can’t pay my rent. Maybe I start to cope with those things by using substances more than I should. It’s all connected with how these things turn into a downward spiral. And then if you look at someone’s life and you see homelessness and you see addiction and you see maybe strained relationships in the marriage because they’re stressed about work, all of these things compile into what could be a suicide attempt or self-alternation or depression or anxiety or all these different things. And so, it’s more than just saying, Oh, shame on you. You work construction. It automatically means you have a higher likelihood of dying by suicide.

But it actually means, hey, these professions come with certain social and societal risks, and all of those things together correlate into higher suicide risks. And the last thing I’ll say is that for those of you that are listening that work in safety, recognize that the professions that I just named are often the ones with robust internal safety departments because of the physical risks as well.

Correct. That’s exactly where I was going to go.

Yeah, exactly. Take it away, Eric. But yeah, that was the point I wanted to make there.

No, I think it’s a great observation because the industries you mentioned are the industries that typically have higher physical risk. It’s not the accountant; it’s not the lawyers that typically are going to have a serious injury. It can obviously happen. But those are the industries that have more robust safety cultures, generally more risk awareness. But not necessarily addressing the full spectrum of the mental health element.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that that’s an opportunity for change. Risk is a whole human. Social determinants of health, it’s a whole human. How do you take care of your whole people. It’s not just the physical risk. It’s not just, hey, let’s make sure someone doesn’t accidentally chainsaw their leg off. But it’s also, how do we make sure that they are taken care of on the inside as well? Cool.

Maybe let’s talk about some of the existing interventions that we see in many organizations. Let’s look at some of the challenges or shortfalls to be aware of with them.

Absolutely. I want to start by saying that any organization that is doing anything at all to address employee mental health deserves a round of applause. This is by no means a critique on, well, shame on you, you’re not doing enough. This is just an evaluation of how some of these things work. One of the most common ones is what’s called an EAP, so an Employee Assistance Program. And it is, broadly speaking, there’s different formats, but it is a hotline or a website that you can access that provides short term resources for different things. So, you can get a couple financial counseling sessions. You can get a couple mental health therapy sessions. They can refer you to some other resources Some EAPs will have monthly trainings. We recently had one on buying your first home, so how to navigate that whole process. So, it’s like a miniature two one, a miniature location where people can go and get resources for things that they’re struggling with. But the challenge with EAPs is, well, actually a couple of different things. But one, their employer provided, and so confidentiality is a concern. EAPs are in theory confidential. They should not be telling your employer that, oh, they took financial counseling from us, or, oh, they took mental health counseling from us.

But there’s always that concern, especially in organizations or professions where there’s a culture of, I’m strong, I don’t need it, or maybe even the very real risk of, if my supervisors find out that I’m struggling with my mental health, they’ll bench me, they’ll fire me, they’ll demote me. All of those things in certain professions are very real risks, unfortunately. And so, there’s that concern of, okay, well, I’m calling this number that my employer gave me. I don’t want this getting back to I don’t want this getting back to them in any fashion. So, there’s that concern related to confidentiality. But there’s also the concern about a true connection to the resource that’s being provided. Three therapy sessions, great. Love it. Any person getting in the door of therapy is amazing. But in order to really have positive impacts from mental health counseling, you need that strong therapeutic relationship with the person that you’re providing. With an EAP, it’s usually very short-lived, and there’s usually not a huge variety of providers or even the opportunity to choose which provider that you’re working with. I’m sure there’s an EAP out there that’s going to comment on this and be like, well, we can do that, and that’s amazing.

But for the vast majority of them, it’s a pretty limited system. And research has consistently shown that the quality of the therapeutic relationship is even more important when it comes to positive outcomes from therapy than the modality of therapy or the clinical skill of the provider. So, this isn’t just, oh, it’s nice to like your therapist. It’s there are actually measurable clinical outcomes from having a positive relationship with your therapist. And then EAP simply doesn’t provide that for most people. So better than nothing, but also something to consider that, hey, maybe this isn’t doing quite what we think it is, and we can’t just check the box of, Good. Mental health’s solved. We have an AP. The other resource that I see a lot are flyers for the crisis line. So, the National Suicide Prevention Crisis Line is 988. It works just like 911. It’s a 24/7 free resource that you can call. It is completely confidential. All of their clinicians are bound by HIPAA. So, it’s not something that me, as your employer, could call and say, hey, has Eric called 988 lately? They’d play down and be like, I don’t know who Eric is.

I’ve literally never heard him in my life. I know this because I’ve had to handle some of those calls. Yeah, no, it’s a really, really phenomenal resource, and I absolutely love it. The challenge with 988 is that it is a reactive resource. So, it requires the person in crisis to say, I’m in crisis. I’m going to reach out for this resource. And as we just talked about in a lot of these professions, there’s that culture of, I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay, I don’t need help. What we really need instead is, yes, we need an EAP. Yes, we need to refer people to the crisis line. But we need to go upstream a little bit more and look at how do we turn our organization into a culture of care within itself, where I can look at you and say, hey, I’m noticing something. You’ve been late, you’ve knocked over a few things, you just look sad. Maybe don’t say it like that, but you’re recognizing some of these things and saying, hey, are you okay? I’m going to check in with you. And not only do I have this skill to recognize when you might need a check in, but I have this skill to know how to handle that check in and what to say, how to have that conversation and where to send you afterwards, which is where we talk about EAP-988.

But we need to come a little bit further earlier in the system than that to really get people before it turns into a crisis.

Great observations on that one. Another thing on the EAPs that I’ve often heard from frontline team members is I’m calling somebody on a phone that’s obviously in an office in a big city who has no understanding of the work that I do, and they’re struggling to connect with me and my specific challenges. That element also changes because if you speak to a lot of… In the aviation space as an example, often they’ll have something that’s more in tune with what you’re talking about, where you’re talking to somebody who understands the space. Maybe they were a pilot before they understand the environment. And so, it becomes, I’m talking to somebody who gets me, which also helps.

It helps so much. Yeah. And here’s another plug for the 988 Crisis Lines. They do have some specialized options out there for certain professions. So, there’s hotline specifically for first responders. There’s hotline specifically for military service members. In Washington, where I live, there’s a hotline specifically for members of indigenous communities, where it’s staffed entirely by folks of indigenous backgrounds. I don’t know about hot lines for construction or things like that, but there are definitely hot lines for medical professions. There’s a hotline specifically for sexual assault survivors. All of these ways of crunching down the community into these are a group of people that can understand what I’m going through. That’s phenomenal. And so, I love those unique crisis lines that are out there for things like that.

This episode of the Safety Guru podcast is brought to you by Propulo Consulting, the leading safety and safety culture advisory firm. Whether you are looking to assess your safety culture, develop strategies to level up your safety performance, introduce human performance capabilities, re-energize your BBS program, enhance supervisory safety capabilities or introduce unique safety leadership training and talent solutions, Propulo has you covered. Visit us at propulo.com.

You touched on this element of culture of care, and I’d love you to double click a little bit more on that in terms of what is this culture that you’re trying to build? How would you go about it? Because it sounds simple in many ways, but it’s not as simple as to say, Are you okay? Tell me a little bit more.

Absolutely. It’s simple, but it’s not easy. I’ll say that. It’s not a complex process, but it does take buy-in and time and training in order to make something like that happen. When I say culture of care, what I mean is that most employees, especially if you’re working overtime, especially if you’re working shift work, you end up spending more time with your coworkers than you likely do with your family at home over the course of your working years. And so, what that means is that hopefully you have some pretty strong relationships with the people at work, though not always. But it also means that they are going to be the ones that notice some of these signs and symptoms if they are trained to before your family might or before you yourself It’s another touch point. It’s another opportunity to reach out and connect with someone before whatever they’re struggling with turns into a crisis. And so that’s what I’m talking about with the culture of care is how do we build that entity to where it’s not, I come in, I clock in, I do my work, I go home. But it’s, I come in, I clock in, I see Eric crying in the corner, I check in with Eric, and I see how Eric’s doing, and I connect Eric to a better resource.

That’s what we’re trying to build, is how do we take care of each other? And it’s not It’s not just, oh, I am the HR person, so therefore, I am now the person that everyone comes to. That’s great, but that’s a huge load on you for one person to try to manage the mental health of the entire organization. It’s how do we get all of us to do that? It’s not one person for everyone. It’s one person for one person. And so that person has someone for them. And it’s this spider web that we’re trying to connect people in. And so, what I really tell people and what I teach people is what I’ve designed as my life model of prevention. And it’s an acronym, L-I-F-E. And I will tell you, I spent entirely too much time trying to come up with a relevant acronym for this.

So please be- But it’s a good acronym.

A lot of work that went into that. But our life model here. So, our life model is four steps, and I’ll high level it. Eric, we can break it down if you have specific questions there. But this is really everything that I learned in grad school, everything that I do in the field, condensed into four simple steps that anyone can use to interact with someone in crisis. The L of this model is listened. And bear with me, because people who hear active listening usually are like, oh, for the love of God, please not again. We don’t need more fluffy stuff. Or they’re like, okay, this is really cool. And I will tell you, in my current job, I do crisis work. I’m in the field. I’m also a negotiator on our SWAT team. And the whole skillset that we use when it comes to diffusing those really, really high-risk situations and convincing someone to walk out of the house and get arrested is active listening. Sure. So, this is not fluffy. This is not, oh, show them you care. This is very tactical. Here’s how to phrase this sentence when they say this.

That’s how much we’re breaking it down in the L of that life model. Our I, F, and E of the life model, those are specifically to someone who might be considering suicide. So, we do all the active listening. We understand their story. They feel really heard and understood and validated. And then we move into the I, which is inquire. This is where we ask if someone is considering suicide, and we do it very calmly, very directly. No wiggling around it because we’re uncomfortable about saying the word. This is also the place where if they say yes, we do a very, very basic risk assessment to understand if this is a, I can handle this situation, or an, oh, my God, I need to call 911 situation. Very, very basic risk assessment there. Sure. In our F of the life model, this is forming a safety plan. So historically, 10, 20 years ago, we used safety contracts, which is essentially if I was feeling suicidal and Eric was my therapist, we would both sign a literal contract, like a piece of paper that said that I would not kill myself. And understandably, that really didn’t work super well.

And we unfortunately had to lose a lot of people to recognize that me living out of obligation to a piece of paper that I signed with Eric is not fantastic. And so, what we have now are safety plans. Safety plans are a collection of resources that a person in crisis can use the next time that they’re in crisis in order to get them over that hump of the crisis into a longer term resource, whether that’s making it to their therapist appointment in a couple of days, whether it’s waiting until there’s a bed available at inpatient, whatever that is. So, there’s actually things that they can do, people they can connect with and resources that they can engage with on that safety plan. The last step of our life model, the E, this is eliminating lethal means. Lethal means is just the fancy term for what they’re going to use to try to kill themselves with. And so, we’re not trying to do perfect lethal means restriction and take away every single possible thing that someone could use to end their life. But we’re trying to pull away some of the big ones and create time and distance between when they’re having that suicidal thought and when they could act on it.

This ties in well with the safety plan because most suicidal crises, really, really acute, I’m going to go jump off the building type of suicidal crises, are actually quite short. It’s a couple minutes to maybe a day or two is when those really, really, really acute crises last. And so, we with the safety plan and with the lethal means restriction, we’re trying to see if we can keep them away from that method long enough for that crisis to pass. So, to give a concrete example of this, if someone is considering using a firearm to end their life, and the firearms is loaded safety off in their unlocked nightstand drawer, all they have to do is open a drawer and pull a trigger if they’re in a crisis. But if the ammo was completely removed from the house and the gun is in the safe in the basement, and only their partner has the code to that, then they would have this thought about ending their life. They’d have to call their partner, get the code, get the gun out of the basement, put on pants, drive to the store, buy ammo, drive back home, and then pull the trigger.

And with all of that time, that gives it space for that person to metabolize the crisis, and hopefully for their partner to step in and say, hey, honey, why do you need the gun safe code? So, there’s opportunities there for that path to reverse. And that’s what we’re trying to do with lethal means restriction. So, all of these things, it can sound complicated. It can sound overwhelming when I’m saying this right now. And I’m not trying to turn anyone into a therapist. If you’re feeling like this is too much for you to handle, sit down with the person and just listen. Forget the I, the F, and the E. Call 911, call their therapist. Call the crisis line. That’s what they are trained to do day in and day out. But if you can do the listening really, really well, if you can inquire well, confidently and calmly, and you can connect them to resources and distance them from what they’re thinking of using, you’re phenomenal. That’s amazing. You probably just save that person’s life. And so those are the skills that I’m trying to instill in these communities and in these organizations, especially those that, like we talked about previously, statistically have that higher likelihood of having folks die by suicide.

Sure. And fairly straightforward in terms of the steps. What I liked about when you talked about culture of care, and safety is also this reference of actively caring. Really, if I know your baseline, if I get to know how you are every day, then I can also spot when somebody’s a little bit off, different, something’s bothering them at that point in time as well. It connects very, very nicely to what you’re talking about on the life side in terms of the life model. Tell me a little bit more about how you go about it in organizations because you obviously are trying to train lots of people in work environment, not some HR person far away, but different people in the work environment. How do you go about doing it? What has worked well in terms of those interventions?

Absolutely. I just want to comment really quickly on what you said previously just this moment ago, because I think that this culture of care is not just, hey, let’s proactively take care of each other, but it also informs how we reactively respond to problems. If someone is having more physical accidents, they’re knocking over more stuff. I just keep coming back to that example, but it’s an easy one to use. They’re knocking over more things. They’re late a couple of days in a row. Their frequency of calling in sick has increased over the past period of time. Instead of you as a leader or you as an administrator sitting down with them and saying, we got to put you on a performance plan. We got to fix these issues. We got to do this, that, and the other thing. Instead of starting there, start with this life conversation. Because for someone to go from a model employee to, oh, my God, they’re barely making it through the door every day, something changed in in that person’s life, meaningful in that person’s life. And that is an opportunity for you to start with, Are you okay? Talk to me human to human.

You’re not in trouble. This is not going to be disciplinary. What’s going on? And start there. I’m not saying don’t have discipline. Because some people make performance plans and all those things but start with that culture of care. That’s really important to start with. So, in terms of what I actually do within organizations, the first question that I ask when I’m speaking to leaders that are like, hey, we want to train our people in this. We want to understand this better. I ask them not who are your managers, but I ask, who are the people within your organization that your people already go to for support? Maybe that is the HR department. Maybe it’s the second-tier level. So, I work with a lot of law enforcement. I do a lot of law enforcement training. And oftentimes it’s the sergeants, which is like one or two steps up from patrol. It’s not the captains, the lieutenants, the command staff. It’s the one level up. So, I want to sit down with leaders and understand who within your organization is already fielding these types of emotional pleas from people. Because those are the people that we want to start with.

If I’m coming into an organization that has a thousand people and I’m like, let’s train all of your people, they’re going to be like, we can’t take a thousand people off the front lines to come sit in this training. It’s not going to work. So who are these people that are already those cornerstones of the emotional structure of the organization? And then we’re going to train them. And everyone has been through a million and one different trainings, all the online, on demand, mandatory, click the button as fast as you possibly can to get it over with type of trainings. And that’s not what we do. We come in, we are in person, and we do a lot of roles playing and activities and scenarios. And I’m not just saying, oh, I’m going to pretend to be a person in crisis. I mean scenarios where I’m literally sobbing my eyes out in the front of the room, and we have to work through this together, and we have to practice those active listening skills. And so, what this does is it obviously is way more engaging, but it also gives folks an opportunity to practice these skills before it’s an actual crisis.

The last thing I want to have happen is teach you this amazing life model that you probably fell asleep through half of it because you’re bored out of your mind just sitting there listening to me talk for 2 hours and then say, go forth and conquer. And you’re like, well, I vaguely remember she said something about a reflective statement, but I have no idea how to use that. I’ve never done it before, and now I’m trying to talk my colleague off the roof of the building. We don’t want to have that happen. And so, we’re looking at how do we implement all of this in a way that is actionable and trainable, and people actually get something out of it. And so, we come in, we have these training sessions, we have these scenarios, we have these discussions with leadership of more from a consulting perspective of how do you change this organization? Do you want to build a peer support team? Do you want to find an EAP that actually works? Do you want to create a literal space within your organization where people can go to have these hard conversations? Because doing it in the lunchroom with everyone walking by is probably not the best idea.

We look at the organization as a form, again, those social determinants of health and say, what can we do to fix this problem? The last thing I’ll add as well is I briefly touched on this earlier with the suicide forensic autopsies. I’ve had a few clients that I’ve worked with where they have tragically lost someone to suicide. And everyone is scrambling, emotionally, logistically, professionally. And so, we’re able to come into organizations and do those autopsies and say, hey, as an organization, here are some things to think about, here are some things to potentially actually change. I want to be very clear with that, I guess, service offering. It is not to point fingers. It is not to point fingers and say, well, this is your fault that your employee died. It is not about that. It is saying, how do we take this absolute tragedy of an instance and make sure that it doesn’t happen to anyone else? Sure. That’s really the lens that we approach that with. So, variety of different options, but the base of it is instilling these skills in folks in a way where they actually feel confident in using them and have some fun along the process.

Because, again, we don’t need another online self-paced, just click the button type training.

So, can the people that are trained, can they be peers? If it’s a unionized environment, I can imagine sometimes it’s a union rep who’s the one that people turn to. Is it always leadership type roles?

Not necessarily. When I say, hey, who are the people that your people are coming to? A lot of times it’s someone with absolutely no formal leadership role. It’s the janitor sometimes because they’re always there and they’re always seeing stuff and they’re part of that community and they recognize people. So, it doesn’t matter a leadership or not. And to your point about peer support, that is my dream, to have clients that say, okay, here are 5, 10, 15 people that people always come to. We’re going to put them through this training, and then we’re going to turn them into a formal peer support team. So how do we structure that? How do we give them access? How do we do this? How do we do that? And then it’s not just, Cool, the people know the thing, but it’s the people know the thing, and there’s actually a structure that other employees can engage with when they’re looking for that level of support. So I am all for people extrapolating this training into a formal peer support team that lives in perpetuity and that provides that legally protected confidential conversation for people when they’re looking for something.

To round this full circle back to our EAP conversations, there’s that concern of, well, I don’t really know this person. I don’t have relationship with them. They don’t understand my profession. All of those very valid challenges within EAP. And that’s what an internal peer support team or even just a culture of care in and of itself can fix. You know these people. They know you. They know your profession. They understand what it’s like. There’s our ready that baseline level of trust, which makes this whole life intervention just a million times easier from there.

And I’ve definitely heard of organizations that have done that with peers, and it really, really rave reviews in that regard because people feel more comfortable sometimes talking to somebody who does exactly the same work as them who understands the work in some cases, even that went through similar challenges. It could be drugs, alcohol, could be mental health, and then just having that recognition of somebody who understands their job, their role. Then the union as well. If you’ve got a good partnership with the union, sometimes that union rep can be also the person if they’re speaking the same language, doing similar actions.

Yes, absolutely. I’ll just add as well, if you leader are thinking, Hey, I want to put together a peer support team, I cannot instill this enough in you that it is not the people that you think are the most emotionally literate or the best at intervention that should be on the peer support team.

That’s a good point.

It needs to be the people that your people think are the most emotionally literate and the best at mental health that need to be on this peer support team. I’ve worked with organizations where I’m looking at the team and I’m looking at the people, and there’s this grumpy old dude in the corner who doesn’t want to be here and wants nothing to do with what I’m talking about. And then we find out later that he’s the team dad that everyone goes to. And so, it’s like, I want that person on the peer support team. So, you as a leader, again, it’s not about what you think or what you want or who you necessarily would trust. It’s who your people trust. Just that framing, if you take away nothing else when it comes to peer support team creation, take away that framing.

Jessi, thank you so much. Really good insights, ideas. I think it’s something that a lot of safety professionals really need to think about as to how does that fit into my safety program? If it’s within HR, how do I partner with HR to have adjacent goals around, make sure that we’re bringing this topic forward, not only just for the suicide prevention elements that you talked about, but in terms of even just directly from a safety standpoint, there’s a huge connection. If you’re not well, you’re not going to perform as safely as you possibly could in the tasks that you’re doing. So, Jessi, if somebody wants to get in touch with you, what’s the best way to do so?

Absolutely. Well, thank you for having me. This has It’s been an awesome conversation, and I’m excited for your folks to get their hands on it. I am on LinkedIn. Feel free to shoot me a message on LinkedIn. If you’re like, yes, I’m bought in. Let’s do this. I want to make sure that my people are protected with their mental health as well. Shoot me a message. I’d be more than happy to have a conversation with you. I offer free consultations related to suicide prevention where we can look at your organization, what are the risks, what’s your industry doing right now related to this, and how can we move forward there. So, questions, if you want to get started, just find me on LinkedIn, and I’m happy to have those conversations.

Awesome. Thank you so much.

Take care.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Jessi Beyer, MHP, is an international TEDx speaker; the #1 best-selling author of How To Heal: A Practical Guide To Nine Integrative Therapies That Can Help Release Trauma; a crisis mental health professional embedded with law enforcement in Snohomish County, Washington; and a negotiator with Region 1 SWAT.

Named the 2025 Best International Mental Health Speaker by Global Health and Pharma, she has been featured in over 200 media outlets, including Thrive Global, Refinery29, and Elite Daily, and has spoken to thousands of people around the world through groups like Penn State University, Leadercast NOW, and the Institute on Violence, Abuse, and Trauma’s international summit. Jessi holds master’s degrees in critical psychology and human services (focusing on trauma and crisis intervention) from Prescott College and in military psychology (focusing on terrorism) from Adler University. Outside of her professional life, she enjoys exploring the trails of the Pacific Northwest and baking (and eating) copious amounts of chocolate chip cookies.

Jessi also holds a special passion for military and first responder mental health. Her father, cousin, and grandfathers served in the military, and Jessi has experience as an EMT, a search-and-rescue volunteer, and a First Responder Therapy Dogs K9 handler. Her heart is with those who are first on the scene, first to fight, and first to help people when they need it most.

For more information: https://jessibeyerinternational.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessierinbeyer

RELATED EPISODE

STAY CONNECTED

The Safety Guru with Eric Michrowski

More Episodes: https://thesafetyculture.guru/

C-Suite Radio: https://c-suitenetwork.com/the-safety-guru/

Eric Michrowski: https://ericmichrowski.com

EXECUTIVE SAFETY COACHING

Like every successful athlete, top leaders continuously invest in their Safety Leadership with an expert coach to boost safety performance.

Safety Leadership coaching has been limited, expensive, and exclusive for too long.

Unlock your full potential with the only Executive Safety Coaching for Ops & HSE leaders available on the market.

Explore your journey with Executive Safety Coaching at https://www.execsafetycoach.com.

Navigating Toxicity in the Workplace and the Importance of Self-Care for Leaders with Beverly Beuermann-King

Oct 2, 2025

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE:

ABOUT THE EPISODE

In recognition of World Mental Health Day, we present a powerful and timely conversation with our returning special guest, Beverly Beuermann-King, a seasoned expert in workplace mental health. Beverly shares her insights on two critical threats to workplace safety and well-being today: toxicity in the workplace and the importance of self-care for leaders. She explores real examples of toxic workplaces and offers actionable strategies to help leaders recognize warning signs, communicate effectively, and engage in difficult conversations to address issues head-on. Beverly also unpacks the deeper drivers behind workaholism, sharing how leaders can identify root causes, set healthy boundaries, and intentionally create space to rest, recharge, and reflect, prioritizing self-care to enhance both their own well-being and that of their teams. This episode highlights why mental health isn’t just a personal wellness matter; it’s a workplace safety issue that fosters a healthier, more resilient workplace culture. Tune in for expert insights to help leaders prevent burnout, navigate toxicity in the workplace, and build environments where people and organizations can truly thrive.

READ THE EPISODE

Real leaders leave a legacy. They capture the hearts and minds of their teams. Their origin story puts the safety and well-being of their people first. Great companies ubiquitously have safe, yet productive operations. For those companies, safety is an investment, not a cost for the C-suite. It’s a real topic of daily focus. This is the Safety Guru with your host, Eric Michrowski, a globally recognized ops and safety guru, public speaker and author. Are you ready to leave a safety legacy? Your legacy success story begins now.

Hi, and welcome to the Safety Crew. Today, I’m very excited to have back with me, Beverly Beuermann-King. She’s a corporate culture and resiliency expert previously on this show. And today we’re going to talk about topics that are related to World Mental Health Day. World Mental Health Day is celebrated every year on October 10th. The day is about coming together to talk about mental health and show everyone that mental health does matter. Today we’re going to talk about two distinct interrelated topics, I think, that are quite interesting. The first one is about toxicity in the organization. The second one is really about leader self-care, work colleagues and leaders and the impact on burnout. Obviously, both have a direct impact on safety. But let’s start talking a little bit about toxicity in the organization.

Yeah, it’s interesting because you look at a definition for the word toxic. It’s harsh, malicious, harmful. Aren’t they great words? They have an impact. We can actually see them. We can see where both toxic workplaces breed toxic employees, and toxic employees breed toxic workplaces. So, they’re back and forth. We’re impacted and affected by the people around us.

In many cases, I’ve seen in organizations where this can occur, even in a great culture, it can occur in pockets. Small pockets, parts of the Certain locations, if you’re thinking in construction company, could be one site. You’re talking about a utility, could be one region or district. Tell me a little bit about what drives that toxicity and why is it allowed to take root?

We could probably spend an entire day talking about this part, but there are certainly some themes that I’m seeing right now in workplaces, and entitlement being one of them. And so, entitlement isn’t one generation over another, but it can be because of my position, my years of service, my academic background, whatever that looks like. It’s that this is what I deserve, right? And so, it’s that myopia of looking at situations. So that can cause toxicity, right? Everything is about me. Everything is about what I can gain. There’s also in our organizations right now this us versus them mentality. It could be management up against frontline. It could be inside sales, outside sales, whatever it looks like. But it’s that high school mentality of you’re in or you’re out. Again, when we have cliques, when we have groups like that, it creates this sense of negativity and difficult attitudes and behaviors that take place. Then we also have passive-aggressive types of behaviors such as gossiping. It could be things like harassment and bullying that add into this toxicity.

That toxicity could be a leader; it could be a team member or a group of team members. You mentioned it could even be customers.

Yeah. I mean, that toxicity can come from a number of different places. Like I said, it’s impacting the organization. When it has this detrimental effect, and that effect can be on the team as a whole, it could be on a particular person, it could be on the leader, it could be on the customer, but it’s having an impact on the way that we deal with the people around us. Again, that toxicity, it grows, it permeates other areas. It’s really important that we find ways of being able to address that within our organizations.

What are some of the ways that leaders can, one, notice and identify? I’m thinking potentially a senior leader, you may have pockets of the organization. It could be just a few areas where this is occurring. How can they deal with it? Because this toxic environment breeds a very unhealthy workplace.

It does, and it can lead to all kinds of safety issues because we’re not paying attention. Sometimes I talk about leadership attentiveness as being a real key to this, because for many leaders, we have far too much to do and not enough time to do it in. Sometimes the people issues take the back burner, which allows that toxicity to fester and grow. Really good leaders, they start to pay attention to this because they know that it’s not just somebody being rude, somebody being negative. They know that the whole team is impacted by this toxicity. Really good leaders, they’re willing to do the hard stuff. They’re willing to step into these really difficult conversations in order to address the negativity so that it doesn’t impact everybody else.

In some cases, this can be very exhausting even for a leader. I remember recently, I was in a session and the leader was talking about how there is this… He didn’t use the word toxicity, but there was this toxicity, a sense of entitlement, unacceptable behaviors occurring. It was exhausting for him to interact with a group on a regular basis. Some days he just said, I just need some time out. It’s a lot to deal with.

It is a lot to deal with. On top of all of the other layer upon layer of unpredictable ability that we’re dealing with, then you have this toxicity. We’re not taught how to have these conversations, how to address it effectively. We look at different ways and different actions that can be taken. Some of them are dealing with the conversation that needs to be had and stepping into those conversations. Others are looking at what’s contributing to the negativity and the toxicity. In a lot of cases, it is this stress. It is pervasive. It is across the organization. It is causing burnout. When we understand maybe the factors behind the toxicity in the first place, as a leader, not only do you need to address the corporate culture, things like workloads and control and recognition and support and fairness, but it’s also about being able to step into the conversation and communicate in a way that’s effective so that it doesn’t keep coming back. I had one organization where the leader said, this person has been this way for 20 years. I’m like, First of all, what has allowed that person to be this way for 20 years?

We There’s been things that have allowed that to become the norm. As leaders, we need to be able to, are we creating the culture that we desire? As a team, are we stepping up and saying, this is not the culture that we want, and doing the hard work to create a positive culture?

You brought an interesting point that we’ve never really been trained or prepared on how to deal with these conversations. What are some of the tactics that leaders can use to have those challenging, difficult conversations that may be required?

I would say, first, be intentional. Tune into this. Understand that you need to address it. My number one is prepare ahead of time. What I mean by that is don’t get caught up that there’s been a blow up or there’s been a situation in a meeting and you’re reacting from a gut level. You just fire all barrel’s thing. Sure. You need to plan What is the goal of this conversation? And that’s a really big piece. What am I trying to address and what’s the goal? And then when’s the right time? When’s the right place? How is this person typically going to respond? Are they going to cry? Are they going to stomp, scream and shout? Are they going to point fingers? Are they going to start swearing and slamming doors? Whatever that looks like. And then if they do that, how am I going to respond to that situation so that I’m not just responding, I’m acting rather than reacting?

Excellent. Because I’ve seen in some cases, I’ve had people that I worked with where they would start banging on the table and screaming. And your point is really good. If you get hooked into it, then your conversation is going to derail. But if you know that’s going to come, then you can better prepare for it.

Yeah, you play those situations in your mind. How am I going to maintain my composure, my professionalism? How am I going to get to the goal of the conversation and address it appropriately? I talk about starting the conversation by listening, which is not what most leaders do. We need to say… One of the questions I ask is, what has been going well and what has not been going so well? I want to get their perspective on both of those because that could feed into some of the information that maybe I haven’t been privy to. It gives me an idea of where they’re coming from, their starting point is. Maybe for the first time, they finally feel like they’re being listened to, which can get rid of some of the toxicity in the conversation right from the get-go. Listen to what they have to say and then start to give some feedback as to how these fits with the culture that you’re creating or how it doesn’t fit with the culture that they’re creating. We often make the mistake of thinking that a really good employee, a customer, a co-leader would know that their behavior is out of alignment.

For the most part, people don’t. You need to bring it to attention of how that behavior doesn’t feed into the culture that we’re trying to create.

Interesting because you’re right, we assume that they No. But in the example, you shared just a few seconds ago about somebody who’s been doing this for 20 years, it now becomes an accepted norm.

It does. Where is it out of alignment? One of the things that I talk in my presentations to leaders is we need to start with what are our values? For me, values are our rules of engagement, and they’re not created top down. They’re created within the team. A team may have a set of values that may be different than the organizational set of values because it’s the rules of engagement. How are we going to treat each other? How are we going to get stuff done? How are we going to connect with each other? These are our rules of engagement. When we have been very clear about what it looks like when we’re living them and what it looks like when we’re not living them, then you can start to hold people accountable to the behaviors that you want to see within the team. Until you’ve got that playing field of really being clear about those definitions, it’s really hard to hold people accountable. And so that’s my first step in many cases.

You touched on the topic of accountability. How do you drive that accountability? Because there’s the first conversation, but how do you follow through to make sure that that accountability actually sets in drive change.

When I talk about these steps, the follow through is often the one that leaders miss. It’s like, we’ve had the conversation, and we will never talk about this again. It’s like a one and done. It is never a one and done. We talk about what is it that we’ve agreed to? What does that look like? How are we going to measure that? How am I going to know that that’s been happening? Is it going to be a one-on-one? Is it going to be reports from your colleagues? What does that look like? Then if this person is able to do that, great. We jump all over that. We reward that and recognize it. If they’re not, we continually go back to holding that person accountable. At some point, maybe we need to make one of those hard decisions where this person may not be the right fit for this team. Sure.

You touched on the person who’s been around 20 years, and this is how they’ve been the whole time. I’ve seen this many organizations where there’s an acceptance of certain people that may be shouldn’t belong there, individuals that cause a lot of grief, toxicity in the workplace where it’s been allowed for a long time. Leaders start accepting that this is the cards I’ve been dealt with. This is the individuals I have, and this is how they will be, and I can’t change this person. That can be this barrier where it creates even stress to have those conversations where I avoid it. I’ve seen this in more present in some organizations than others. What are some of the ways to remove some of the stress and how to convince people to address with some of these things that may be 20 years in the making?

I think as an organization and as teams, we have a responsibility to make sure that we’re creating the culture that we desire, that we work the best in, that we can bring our very best selves in. And so when it’s creating stress, when people are absent, when they don’t want to come, when there’s not that enthusiasm, when I don’t want to tell you something because I don’t know how it’s be used against me, when people are showing signs of burnout and lack of engagement, that’s why we address this stuff, because it does have an impact. It has an impact on who we are, what we can achieve, how we treat our customers, our safety, our overall health. And so, when we know and we take note of the importance, it’s a whole lot easier to make the time to deal with this stuff because we know that it’s not just, like I said earlier, it’s not just somebody being rude. It’s not just somebody who is, that’s just who they are. No, it’s having an impact on everybody and the way that we do the job. We’re losing really good people because of it.

I love the simplicity of how you present it around toxicity in the organization. Very similar as well to some of the themes I’m hearing more and more in the safety space, safety arena, around psychosocial risks. Just these pockets in the organization where it’s causing a negative impact on the people working it. Just very simple ways to address it, but you’re really bring in the importance of bringing that to the forefront. I appreciate that.

We talk a lot about the factors that make for a good workplace, and respect and appreciation is one of those. Are we working in a situation where there’s respect for my time, my energy, my education, my contribution, Am I being appreciated for that contribution as well? What does that look like? It’s not necessarily financial either. It’s how am I being acknowledged? When we allow that toxicity to take place, it’s taking away from everything that’s core to who we are.

Absolutely. That’s a great topic. The other one I wanted to touch on as we celebrate World Mental Health Day is the topic of leader burnout. We You talked about workaholic, but also the element of leader self-care. When you first joined me on the first episode, you talked a lot about the impact on team members around some of the elements of burnout and so forth. I love the research you’re doing recently around workaholic, and you identified different types of drivers for being a workaholic. Can you share a little bit more about those drivers, but also why it really matters to understand which one is driving that behavior?

This episode of the Safety Guru podcast is brought to you by Propulo Consulting, the leading safety and safety culture advisory firm. Whether you are looking to assess your safety culture, develop strategies to level up your safety performance, introduce human performance capabilities, re-energize your BBS program, enhance supervisory safety capabilities, or introduce unique safety leadership training and talent solutions, Propulo has you covered. Visit us at propulo.com.

It’s hard because a strong work ethic is absolutely admirable. It’s what we’re looking for. But there’s a difference because a stronger work ethic helps us to progress. It helps us to achieve our goals. It helps us to do the things that we need to do. But when it moves into being a workaholism, it’s not about choosing to work hard. It’s about being unable to stop. It’s about not having the balance. And so, it does have an impact on who we are. We become more anxious. We have difficulty separating ourselves. We’re not involved in We’re not present in our personal lives, right? Because we’re continually thinking about what needs to be done. And sometimes we equate that with who we are. That’s just who I am, right?

That’s my self-worth. I do this because… But it’s because I can’t stop. That’s where the line is. I can’t separate myself.

Can you touch on the different types of workaholics? Because I think that’s also interesting to understand what’s driving that inability to stop.

When I do my program on dealing with difficult people, I have these eight animals that I use for the personalities, right? And so, when I was looking at this, I’m like, well, you know what? People remember the animal. So, I did the animals for the different types of workaholics as well. And I think that gives them a sense of who they are. It puts it into a bit of a perspective. So, the over committing beaver, right? It’s that person who is always building it. They’re always trying to take on more than they can manage. And so, they’re the people that are involved in every project. They’re accepting all of these extra committees. Their plate’s already full, but they’re taking on more. So, they get overwhelmed. They don’t have balance. There’s no time for recovery. So, we see the downside. So, we see the good side, right? They’re getting all this stuff done, busy like fever, but it’s having that impact of there’s no space, there’s no time for recovery. So, when there’s an emergency, what do you do? You don’t have any of the reserves. So that’s one. The attention seeking moth. They’re drawn to the light of recognition.

They’re looking for approval. They want people to notice what are they doing. So, they’re going to stay late. They’re going to show that they’re putting all of this time and energy. They don’t take their vacations because they’re just so busy. So, they’re always looking for recognition. And their self-worth really relies on that recognition, which leads them only to being exhausted. Sure. The light goes away. Let’s see. Who else is an interesting one? The shark. They can’t stop moving. With a shark, if they stop moving, they can’t breathe. It’s that same thing that they’re always moving, they’re always… They can’t stop. There’s never a celebration of the project that they’ve just completed. They’re already into the next one. There’s never this recognition. There are never these pauses. There’s never this outward-looking to the team and saying, Hey, good job, because we’re already into the next one, which it’s compulsive. They’re working through the night. There are never-ending tasks in front of them. I love this because there’s so many different types. There’s the lone wolf who just won’t delegate because nobody can do it like they do. It’s that they have to check every detail, which if you’re working for that person, it’s like, well, why did I do this if you’re going to do it anyways?

It demotivates the people around, and then things fall apart. If we don’t see some of the other things that could be causing hazards, when we talk about safety, they may not be noticing the things that they should have their eye on because they’re so busy checking other people’s work.

Sure. I love the connection with the animals. It makes it very memorable in terms of the analogies, and those are really good comparisons. It’s also something that we tend to reward and recognize in businesses. If I look at many senior leaders I’ve worked with over the years, they tend to work really hard, and that’s something that’s appreciated. They work through the night to get things done. Through storms, through whatever may happen, they’re doing good work. How do we balance this as you talked about before, the value of somebody who’s productive, who’s efficient, and recognizing those pieces with making sure we don’t create or encourage workaholics?

We talk about Functional and nonfunctional, right? So, for many work colleagues, they appear very functional. They’re productive, they’re reliable. And like you said, their drive is elevated. It’s admired, right? They’re praised for their persistence and their loyalty. But we can only keep that pace up for a while without it. And then it’s going to have these impacts. And so, we see, then it moves into the nonfunctional, where there’s chaos and you have to become even more controlling. And it undermines other people and other people’s performance because you can’t keep into that level. Often, we think of there’s this productivity paradox where more doesn’t equal better. It does have an impact on the team. People don’t want to work for somebody like that. If we’re talking about leaders, we see more absenteeism, more turnover, more disengagement. Then as that disengagement, that becomes burnout, it becomes safety issues, it becomes mental health issues. It does have a negative impact.

How would an organization balance the desire? Because it’s often that person who’s always getting things done is desirable versus a person who gets nothing done or who is a slacker at the other end of the extreme. We can send the wrong signals as well in terms of encouraging that behavior inadvertently.

Yeah, I think we go back to looking at making it acceptable to say no. Sure. Because we want to please, we want to do a good job? What does success look like? And so, we’re going to try harder. But we need to make it acceptable to say, no, I can’t do it right now or no, I have too many things on my plate. It’s about as a leader, making make sure that you’re setting realistic workloads. And one of the things I talk about right now is what does realistic look like right now? Because what it looked like five years ago may not be realistic today. And so, is that How does that play out? Then also, do people have the right resources to do the job? Do you have enough people on your team to do what you need to do? Do you have the right technology? The other piece with that, I talked about respect and appreciation, but are we rewarding effectiveness? Are we rewarding collaboration? Are we rewarding sustainability in getting things done? Like sustainability It’s a valuable effort. So, burning out, that’s not what we’re looking for, right? And so, are we rewarding in our organizations the right things?

So, it’s not necessarily about hours. The hour that you’re logged on or the hours that you’re working, but hey, it’s completing a project. How did we complete it? Did we complete it in a way where there was innovation and collaboration and quality? Was there effective problem solving and communication? If we’re looking at the right things, then people can still be successful. They can still work hard, but we’re not burning them out.

If you’re a leader and you recognize yourself as a as a shark, as a busy beaver, as, I think, the moth. I can’t remember the other animal, but if you recognize yourself in one of these animals, what can you do? The good old expression around put your own oxygen on mask first, that we hear in every safety demonstration. Tell me a little bit more about what that leader can do.

Recognize what’s driving the behavior in the first place. Are you afraid that you’re not good enough? Are you avoiding something in your personal life so it’s easier to be at work? Why are you doing the things that you’re doing? And then start to set some boundaries, those boundaries for yourself. It may be something as simple as making sure you’re taking your full lunch break. It may be something as simple as making sure that you’re not checking your work emails after whatever specific time, after It’s a set a boundary, eight o’clock. After eight o’clock, I am completely disconnected. And so, start small with those boundaries. It’s going to feel uncomfortable. It’s going to feel like I need to be doing this stuff. It’s odd to have time on your hands. Sure. But then look at how can I then, with that time, do something for myself in self-care? It might be rest, it might be recharging, it might be doing something that brings you joy that maybe you’ve stepped away from. Maybe it’s simply having time to reflect and to think about what the future might be like. So then once we’ve got that and then look at ways of redefining who you are.

It can’t solely be on your productivity. It can’t solely be about your achievements. Who are you at your core? What makes you valuable? What makes you worthy? And it doesn’t necessarily need to be about how much accomplish in a day, which for me, that’s a big one. My worth is, how many things did I get off my to-do list? What projects did I get done? And not who am I at the core? And so, for me, that’s one of my hardest ones. We’re not perfect. And so, embracing that imperfection again, which is really hard to do when you’re when you’re stuck in that workaholic mode.

And I had an executive coach who shared that Those boundaries can be set in the day and should be set in the day but also should be set over long periods of time. You talked about not taking your vacations as an example. But his point was also, even if you work very hard, at least then counterbalance it with extended vacations. So, more time off, more time to recharge. Any truth, thoughts around that?

Absolutely. There are rejuvenation periods that you can take an extra day on a long weekend, make it a long weekend. But then there needs to be more chunked periods of time. I think the easiest thing to do is to plan those out far in advance, because if we wait for the perfect time to take our vacation, it will never come. I’m in that mode right now, too. We were hit very hard with the ice storms here on our property, and so we’ve been working very hard to put things back together. We’re looking, here’s the whole summer has been spent, and We haven’t gone on our vacation because… And so now we’re looking at the fall saying, okay, we can’t keep this up. What are we doing to connect? What are we doing to get together? And I’m craving it now, whereas before, I was like, we just got to get through this stuff.

But you bring an interesting point because in some cases, workaholic substitute workaholic in the work environment to workaholic at home, where you check in, what did you do on vacation? And I worked hard to build something or do something at home, and you’re actually never really disconnecting. You’re just changing the work.

Yeah. If you’re feeling pushed or… When I talk about vacations, it’s what’s the purpose of your vacation? Sure. Of your vacation. Some vacations are to get projects done at home, but other times it needs to be for relaxation or rejuvenation or reconnection. And so, are you planning the to meet your purpose? Often people will say, I want to get reconnected to my family, but then they book 15 side trips and you’re running and everybody’s in a hurry and we never had time to actually really connect. And then people come back saying, I need a vacation from my vacation. It didn’t fit the purpose. And so, are we planning our life in a way that is purposeful? At the beginning, I said, are we acting rather than reacting? And I think that’s a good theme for how we live or are we acting in a way that is congruent to who we want to be? Are we acting in a way that allows us to be engaged and be involved and achieve the things that we want to achieve in a healthy way so that We’re not burning ourselves out so that we’re not experiencing extreme anxiety or depression or this guilt that takes us away from everything.

Your example just makes me think that one can bring their workaholic state to their vacation and say, how do I have an efficient vacation where I maximize every second and just bring in that same temperament ideas into your opportunity to disconnect?

I love when I see there’s… Generally, in family vacations, there’s always somebody in the family or in the friend group who has everything planned down to the nanosecond. And then there’s other people that are in the group who are like, where are we going? Okay, great. What do I need to pack? Okay, I’ve got one of those. It’s interesting because they may not be that way in the workplace, or they may be exactly that way in the workplace. I always find it really interesting where the person who at work has everything completely planned, but where they can completely let go in their vacation. That’s the best of both. Where you’re able to let things flow and happen, and you don’t get upset and anxious when you don’t know every moment of every detail.

Beverley, it’s such a pleasure to have you back on the show. I think we touched on two really critical topics as we cover World Mental Health Day. One is the element of toxicity in the organization. How do you recognize it? How do you deal with it? And some of the strategies to have those difficult conversations and hold people accountable around it. I think that’s a really, really critical topic around workplace health, but also ultimately safety, as you mentioned. Then the second part is the leader self-care. How do I make sure that as a leader, I don’t burn out? Because if I’m burning out, I’m not going to be a great leader for my team as you touched on. I’m not going to be a great safety leader. I’m not going to be looking out for the signs or symptoms that something’s going to be maybe off. I’m not going to be interacting with my teams the way I should. Two really critical topics. If somebody wants to get in touch with you, what’s the best way for them to do that?

You can reach me through my website at [email protected], where the website is worksmartlivesmart.com. There’s all kinds of articles on toxicity and dealing with difficult people and burnout and mental health. I think there’s over 500 articles there. If you’re looking for more, that’s a great place to go and grab more information, especially as we celebrate World Mental Health Day, Healthy Workplaces Month, Mental Illness Awareness Week. October is so rich for all of these celebrations that really focus on how we take care of ourselves.

You run a whole breadth of workshops, help a lot of organizations in this corporate culture, the resiliency space, such a critical topic these days. I appreciate you having me back. Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me here.

ABOUT THE GUEST

With an impressive track record spanning over 25 years, Beverly Beuermann-King has been guiding individuals and organizations toward mastering their reactions to stress, cultivating resilience, and achieving thriving, successful lives through her innovative S-O-S Principle™.

As the driving force behind WorkSmartLiveSmart.com since 1995, Beverly has been at the forefront of transforming teams across diverse industries, including healthcare, education, government agencies, finance, and not-for-profit sectors, from overwhelmed to resilient powerhouses. Her presentations, rooted in extensive research and drawing from her background in psychology, sociology, management, and adult education, are both enlightening and inspirational, offering audiences the precise strategies needed to improve mental health, tackle workplace challenges, and amplify overall life satisfaction.

Beverly‘s influence extends far beyond her captivating speaking engagements. She is a prolific author, esteemed podcaster, and a sought-after media and brand spokesperson, gracing over 500 television and radio shows. Recognized as one of the esteemed Certified Speaking Professionals, a distinction held by less than 70 Canadians, she has also made history as the inaugural Certified Virtual Presenter through eSpeakers and Power Women WorldWide. And currently, Beverly is the National President of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers. Prepare to be captivated as Beverly empowers you to conquer stress, cultivate resilience, and unlock the secrets to a healthier, more fulfilling life.

For more information: www.WorkSmartLiveSmart.com

Articles to support the conversation:

https://worksmartlivesmart.com/reality-of-toxic-workplaces/

https://worksmartlivesmart.com/workaholic-types/

RELATED EPISODE

STAY CONNECTED

The Safety Guru with Eric Michrowski

More Episodes: https://thesafetyculture.guru/

C-Suite Radio: https://c-suitenetwork.com/the-safety-guru/

Eric Michrowski: https://ericmichrowski.com

EXECUTIVE SAFETY COACHING

Like every successful athlete, top leaders continuously invest in their Safety Leadership with an expert coach to boost safety performance.

Safety Leadership coaching has been limited, expensive, and exclusive for too long.

Unlock your full potential with the only Executive Safety Coaching for Ops & HSE leaders available on the market.

Explore your journey with Executive Safety Coaching at https://www.execsafetycoach.com.

« Older Entries

Managing Psychosocial Risks to Build Safer Workplaces with Kylie Long

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE:

ABOUT THE EPISODE

READ THE EPISODE

ABOUT THE GUEST

RELATED EPISODE

STAY CONNECTED

The Safety Guru with Eric Michrowski

EXECUTIVE SAFETY COACHING

Small Acts, Big Impact: Elevating Safety and Mental Health with Dr. Keita Franklin

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE:

ABOUT THE EPISODE

READ THE EPISODE

ABOUT THE GUEST

RELATED EPISODE

STAY CONNECTED

The Safety Guru with Eric Michrowski

EXECUTIVE SAFETY COACHING

Prepare for the Unexpected: Leadership and Safety Lessons from an Offshore Explosion with Lee Ellis

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE:

ABOUT THE EPISODE

READ THE EPISODE

ABOUT THE GUEST

RELATED EPISODE

STAY CONNECTED

The Safety Guru with Eric Michrowski

EXECUTIVE SAFETY COACHING

From Crisis to Care: Strengthening Mental Health in the Workplace with Jessi Beyer

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE:

ABOUT THE EPISODE

READ THE EPISODE

ABOUT THE GUEST

RELATED EPISODE

STAY CONNECTED

The Safety Guru with Eric Michrowski

EXECUTIVE SAFETY COACHING

Navigating Toxicity in the Workplace and the Importance of Self-Care for Leaders with Beverly Beuermann-King

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE:

ABOUT THE EPISODE

READ THE EPISODE

ABOUT THE GUEST

RELATED EPISODE

STAY CONNECTED

The Safety Guru with Eric Michrowski

EXECUTIVE SAFETY COACHING

Recent Posts