Leading with Care: Effective Leadership to Support Mental Health in the Workplace with Beverly Beuermann-King

May 1, 2025

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It’s Mental Health Awareness Month, and we’re thrilled to welcome Beverly Beuermann-King to the show! With over 25 years of experience helping organizations build strong, resilient teams, Beverly brings a wealth of wisdom on what it truly means to lead with care. She shares powerful insights on fostering a culture of both physical and psychological safety, addressing workplace toxicity, and emphasizing the importance of supportive conversations and peer-to-peer support systems to build a strong sense of connection and belonging. Don’t miss this inspiring conversation, packed with actionable tips for effective leadership to support mental health, enhance your team’s well-being, and strengthen team engagement in the workplace. Tune in now!

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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 a special guest, Beverly Beuermann-King. She’s a mental health and corporate culture expert joining us as we celebrate Mental Health Awareness Month. So, Beverly, welcome to the show. Very excited to have you with me.

Wonderful. Thank you, Eric.

So maybe let’s get started with how did you get into this space? How did you start approaching this space around mental health and corporate culture?

It was a roundabout kind of journey, I think. So, I started running a residence for Sheridan College and within that, you know, dealing with stress of students and being away from home and having to buy their own food and manage their money. And many students were at risk, I would say. And so that piqued my interest and developing some programs to help them move forward. And then I started with the Canadian Mental Health association and that was an amazing experience because at that time I was presenting programs to frontline workers on mental health and mental illness and how to help the most vulnerable in our populations. So it was, it was, it was a good start because it gave me a feeling for not just how to deal with stress as the frontline workers, but also how to deal with people who were really struggling with mental illness issues, which then kind of propelled me into being able to do this in a corporate setting.

There we go. And obviously we’re looking at mental health, incredibly important, huge connection as well to physical safety in the workplace. But first, I want to get into a topic that we hear a lot in the news around burnout. And can you get to some of the themes in terms of what contributes to high burnout in individuals in workplaces?

Yes. So, for me, burnout is about losing your fire, losing your spark. So, it’s more than just being tired out and worn out. The essence of who you are is being taken away. And so, when we look at what are some of those contributors, because it is a workplace issue, it’s, you know, often we’ll talk about burnout in like a general context of being tired out and worn-out, burned-out kind of thing. But in a. It is a workplace issue. And so, we need to address some of those top contributors. Work overload. Too much to do, not enough time to do it in, which is a common theme, I think. But I think the other pieces that go with that is not having control. So, a lack of control is part of that. Lack of recognition is part of that. Not having a support circle around you contributes to that. And in some cases, you know, we look at, are you the right person in the right job right now?

Sure.

And so sometimes, you know, we look at maybe we were, and the job has changed, or the culture has changed and it’s not a good fit anymore. I use a slide when I’m working with audiences and its high demand plus low control equals high stress. And so, we think about situations where people are under high demand, where there’s a lot on their plate, but not necessarily a lot of control over what they do. That’s a recipe for high stress, which can lead to burnout, it can lead to depression, it can lead to anxiety issues. The other one is, you know, high effort plus low reward. Okay, so when we have a lot of physical effort or a lot of mental effort, but without a lot of recognition around an appreciation for what we do and what we contribute to it, again, that can lead to high stress.

And that recognition, correct me if I’m wrong, could also be. So, I’m thinking about somebody who’s doing physical work, maybe building something. It could also be the seeing the fruit of your labor. Or does it need to be direct recognition from your leader?

It doesn’t necessarily need. I think it’s about being proud of the job that you’re doing and that it’s contributing to the overall goals of the organization. So, it doesn’t necessarily need somebody to say thank you. But if you can see how as a team you’re progressing or how as an individual you contributed to that and then that’s celebrated as an accomplishment. Because recognition isn’t necessarily about an increase in pay. It’s about the pleases and the thank you and, and the camaraderie that goes with it and the many wins along the way.

And I think I like that because you are really. Yes, the recognition from your leader is important, but also the connection between what I’m trying to accomplish and some of those pieces in terms of seeing those milestones. I remember some studies several years back just even showing that people working on very long term projects, if they didn’t see the fruit of their labor for a long period of time, There was impacts on efficiency and overall morale, but teams, I saw very quickly, even progress, small changes, small improvements, felt a lot more recognition as well in that regard.

And I think as a leader, that’s an important part of your role, is to help people to see those wins. Because most projects are long term. Right. And you take, you know, a lot of effort along the way. And so what are the milestones that you’re trying to hit and making sure that you’re taking a moment to celebrate it? Because most of us, you know, we get to the end of that project, we move right on to the next project. Maybe there’s three or four projects going on at a time, and we never actually look backwards to see how far we’ve progressed along the way.

And so, you get into the, the element of burnout. You also talk about some of the essential needs that we have, which you’ve started already talking about. So, tell me a little bit about those essential needs that we all need to have in the work that we perform.

Yeah, it’s, it’s great. You know, as leaders, understanding what your teams need in order to be engaged helps you to be a better leader, helps your team to be more productive, helps your team to stay safer. It’s, it’s all of these things. Right. And so, number one is actually respect and appreciation. If we look at all of the needs, it’s being recognized for your time, your energy, your contribution, the wins that we talked about along the way. But then there’s a whole bunch of other things. So, knowing what’s expected.

Sure.

You know, we talk about how do we make decisions and how do we, you know, proceed when we’re working in these projects? Well, we need to know what’s expected from us, and it needs to be clarified, and it needs to be expanded upon because often we’ll just, you know, we assume that the other person understands. Right, right. The ability to speak up, which I think is a huge piece when we talk about psychological safety as well as physical safety. When you don’t feel like you are in a safe situation, are you able to speak up or is it frowned upon or are you punished in some sort of way? Speaking up. So that ability to speak up, to say that you don’t understand, that you don’t know, that you can’t handle it right now, that there’s too much on your plate, that you need help, all those pieces with that, the freedom from hostility. And so, we talk a lot about what is the environment like? Is it full of harassment and discrimination? Is it an environment where, you know, you get the brunt. I look at a customer service piece, nobody opens them up going, oh, my gosh, I really like whatever this thing is.

People phone up and complain. The IT department, nobody says, oh, my computer is working so well. I’m so thankful. Right? And so even, you know, that hostility is okay. So maybe that is part of the job. How do you get rid of it? Right? And so, I think of the roads department, nobody’s talking about how well they did in cleaning, you know, the snow away and all of that other kind of stuff. But how do you help them to see, yes, they’re doing a good job. And how do you help them get rid of some of that hostility when it does occur? A sense of belonging. We used to call that one of the soft skills of leadership. You know, the team building stuff. It’s, it’s a bit of a, you know, it’s a waste of time. We could do it just because, you know, somebody told us we had to. But we now know how incredibly important that is for people to be resilient, that they have people that they can count on, that they’re connected to, that they share values with, that they can partner with and ask for help from. And so, it’s not just about a social nicety.

It’s an essential need as far as being able to keep people safe. See, where am I? Leadership support. That’s a big one. They need to know that you care. Not that you, you know, that you need to be best friends, but they need to know that you are aware of the situations that they’re in and the workload that they have, that you. You see them as more than just a number, right? An employee number and understand what makes them tick and what is valuable to them, the resources to do the job. Again, I think this is a huge one when it comes to safety because we’ve seen it where people are expected to work in maybe dangerous situations or unsafe situations, but they don’t have the tools to make sure that they stay safe in a workplace? It may not have anything even to do with safety. I had one team where they were frustrated over not having things like staplers and, you know, because nobody, you know, whose responsibility was it to go get that stuff, right? Like, it was just unclear kind of red tape that was associated with it. People generally want to do a good job, so if you give them the tools, they’re more likely to be able to do that.

The last couple, you know, I talked about the ability to bring their talents to the Table. You know, what, what makes them tick, what do they like, what maybe they’re great at planning? Are you using their talents to the best of their abilities? And let’s see, where am I? Nine would be calm. They want moments of calm, which is hard to do in today’s workplace because it’s full of chaos and full of uncertainty. And so, when we talk about periods of calm, not hours, but sometimes just the ability to step away or to take care of yourself or to close your eyes or to take lunch and take your breaks. Right. It’s all part of that, taking it from way up high to, to a level that’s manageable. And then the last one that I have is hope. And I talk about strategic in the work that I do. And it’s, it’s not whimsical, airy, fairy kinds of things. It’s about, for me, hope is about having a vision of where we’re going. It’s about having the energy to get where we’re going, and it’s about being able to problem solve when things stop us from getting to where we’re going.

Right. So, it’s about that flexibility and creativity and innovation.

Sure.

And as leaders, you need to be the one to shine that beacon of hope for the team because things are challenging right now.

When you go through that list, there’s quite a few that have also a very direct link with all the research on just physical safety and the impact on physical safety. You talked about speaking up culture, a key component, because we need people to stop work when they see something that doesn’t look right or ask questions if they don’t really understand the task in front of them, which sounds simple, but it’s not that simple. It’s not that straightforward to stop things to alleviate in a regular environment. Psychological safety is hugely important. But this is, I would say, even more important when you’re doing physical, physical risky work.

Absolutely. You know, we, especially with our younger generations coming in, that ability to speak up and say they don’t understand because there’s the fear of embarrassment, the fear of not looking good enough, the fear of failure. And so, all of these fears stop people from, from speaking up. You know, we have the motto, see something, say something. And I want, you know, your, your listeners to understand that goes for physical safety as well as psychological safety. So, if you have that, you know, where the hairs go up on the back of your neck that says something’s just not quite right, or you have that in your stomach, we get that too when, when we are talking to somebody, and they don’t. They seem off is often what we’ll say. And so, when that happens, we need to step into those conversations and have a supportive mental health conversation with them to say, okay, like what’s going on? And find out if there’s a way that you can support them.

And I think that links to what you were talking about before in terms of caring. Because if I care about you as a person, then I also, I know your baseline. I know what you normally would, you should feel like, how you should talk. And so, I, because I know you. And so, if I’m caring also, it brings up this whole theme of I’m going to approach you because it’s worth having this conversation.

Yeah, we don’t ever want to see anybody fall through the cracks. Right. Where they didn’t feel like it was safe to bring something up or they were embarrassed to bring something up. You know, being able to have those conversations, it. And it doesn’t necessarily need to be about a mental health challenge, a mental illness challenge. It could be that this person’s struggling with a two-year-old that’s going through the terrible twos, or they have a teenager who’s really struggling in school, or they’re looking after elderly parents. A mental health conversation is really just about a caring conversation to open up, find out what the issues are and lead people to the resources that are going to help them to get through that situation.

Let’s dive deeper into this one because I think it’s, it’s an important one because we know that also if from a mental health standpoint, something’s off, which, as you said, could be even something being distracted and not able to sleep because of my 2 year old or a newborn infant or all sorts of other worries that could be coming in the workplace. I don’t have all my attention in the workplace, but also, I’m. I’m more likely to do things that are at risk or more risk gets introduced into the work that I’m performing. So, I think it’s hugely important when we think about safety, both from a psychological standpoint but also from a physical standpoint, is having those conversations. So how, how would somebody go about it? And how do you advise a leader to have those conversations with somebody when they see something that seems a little bit off?

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I use a model called Alec A L, E C and it stands for Ask, listen, encourage and check in. And it’s a simple model. And again, there’s all different kinds of models that are out there. But I like Alec because I think I’m thinking about who I’m talking to. Alec is a person, right? And so, we want to make sure that we’re having a human conversation. So, when I, when I start with the A, which is ask, I’m not only asking, how are they doing? Which is not a great question. And I’ll get to that in just a second. But I’m also identifying what have I noticed that’s different about that person? So, I might say something like, Eric, you know, you’ve been really distracted today, right? So, I’m going to talk about what is it that I’m noticing and what’s going on?

What are you dealing with? What’s getting in the way? When I say how are you? It is far too easy for people to say, fine, good. Okay. And that’s the end of the conversation. Other questions you can use are, you know, today was a really tough day. You know, what, what kinds of things, you know, were you having to deal with? Or what was, what’s the best part of this project that you’re working on? What’s the hardest part of this project that you’re working on? You know, that was a tough conversation. How are you feeling about that conversation? Right. And so, you can, you can dive a little bit deeper, I think, with other questions other than how are you? Right. Or how are you doing? The listen then is listened to what they say, listen to what they don’t say, say, listen to the feeling behind what they’re saying, and then ask some clarifying questions. This is, you know, it’s about helping them to access what is going on. But how long have you felt that way? How is that impacting you? Because then that’s maybe when you find out that they haven’t been sleeping for the last two weeks.

Right? Sure, it might be. Have you ever felt this way before? What have you done when you felt this way before? And so, you can get, you know, that listening is. You can ask questions even though you’re listening, but you’re trying to find out, like the emotion and the strategies and the causes in that listening. The E is all about encouraging. And so, before I go any further, I absolutely want to say this is not about you being a counselor, a psychologist, or a therapist.

Right.

This is just about having a supportive conversation. So, when I talk about encourage, encourage is who can they go and talk to? You are likely not the right person to help them solve this, unless you’re the leader and you can find some accommodations that can be helpful in the workplace. But for the most part, you know, can they go talk to the doctor? Have they talked to their family members? Have they gone and see their therapist? Have they considered a therapist? Can they go and talk to the HR department? Right. There’s lots of different things that you can point them to. It might, you know, as the leader, it might be, you know, if it was a particularly tough, emotional, strenuous, chaotic kind of day, maybe you can give them an extra hour off or tell them to go and take a longer lunch break to get there, you know, kind of there, their head kind of cleared and so that they can think better in the, in the situations. So, the accommodations and the encouragement are just to let them also know that you’re there to listen. And then the last, you know, we said ask, listen, encourage.

And the last part is checking in. Because I think sometimes, we get, we feel like we’re prying or we feel like we’ve had the conversation, we should never have this conversation again. And so, the check in is, hey, you said you were going to go and talk to your doctor. How did that go? Not. You don’t need to know the details.

Yeah.

But hey, is there anything else that I can support you with? Is there anything else that you found out or is there anything else that we need to talk to? You know, hey, if they love watching the, the hockey games, talk about hockey. Right. Like, don’t shut down other conversations because maybe you were a bit nervous or unsure of yourself in the other conversations.

And I think that’s a very straightforward, memorable model. As you bring up. What if somebody shuts down when you say, you ask, how are you doing? If they say I’m fine or they’re dismissive. Right. I like other probing questions because how are you? I think we’ve almost learned that the only right answer to it is I’m good or I’m fine. How do you respond if somebody shuts down?

It depends on the relationship that you have with that person, whether you’re the leader, whether you’re a good colleague, you know, whatever that looks like. But in some cases, I would go back to what is it that I have noticed? Because that can Open it up. So, you got really angry in our meeting today, or you were really distracted, or you forgot all about this, and that’s not like you. Or, you know, I’m looking at that report or I’m looking at that job, and there were a lot of mistakes made, and that’s not usually how you do things. So. Right. If you can point out what you’re noticing, it’s harder for them to avoid having the conversation. Right. You can, you can, you can delve in. You may not get to the emotional part, but you can certainly talk about. Okay, well, I get that maybe there’s some other things going on and you’re not wanting to talk about them right now, but this is what I need you to do because there’s still this safety and standard of work and those things that are expected. So, you can still go back and kind of talk about it if there’s.

And then keep the conversation open. I know there may be some things happening. I may not be the one you want to talk to. Maybe there’s somebody else that you want to talk to. If you don’t have the number, I can certainly give you that. You know, it’s completely confidential. Right. So, there’s, there’s ways of helping to provide support without that person maybe opening up to you. There may be other people that you can point them in that direction.

You can point them in that direction.

Yeah. But I think you still have to address some of the behaviors because those behaviors can lead to safety issues, they can lead to substance use issues. Like there can be all kinds of things that are happening.

Yeah. And you touch on it briefly. But what if you think, hey, I’m not an expert, I’m not a psychologist. I never went to school. I don’t. To study psychology. I don’t know how to have these conversations. And maybe I’m concerned it’s going to be awkward and uncomfortable. How do you convince somebody that, hey, it’s just a regular check in, it’s not a big thing.

It is a regular check in, and it is going to be odd, and it is going to be uncomfortable because they’re not the type of conversations that we have. But again, I go back to what we talked about earlier. It would be better for us to have an odd and awkward conversation than to have somebody put themselves at risk or somebody to fall through the cracks because they felt like nobody understood them or nobody cared.

Sure. And how do you build this in a culture? Because you obviously talk about culture and culture change in that Space. And I think it’s one thing to get leaders to look at these things. And it’s important because I remember one leader was telling me how they asked somebody, they noticed, they knew this person was felt a little bit different that morning. They were about to touch some very heavy machinery and then they checked in similar to what you described. And the person said I didn’t sleep at all last night. I was evicted from my home. And they said, well, you shouldn’t be doing this high-risk task right now. And they did all the right things. From an active care standpoint, how do you build that into the culture? Because it’s one thing for the supervisor, for the leader to have that conversation. How do we get more peer to peer?

Mm. I think it goes. It goes right back to the values that we have as a, as a team or the values that we have as an organization. Our values are more than just these words that are written on a piece of paper that are posted on some wall. What I encourage teams to do is to really talk about these values and what does it look like when we’re living them and what does it look like when we are not living them? And I think that what does it look like when we are not living them is even more important. That’s where we define, hey, if we’re going to talk about safety or if we’re going to talk about respect or going to talk about trust, well, what does it look like when we’re not showing trust? What does it look like when we’re not showing respect? What does it look like when, you know, these things are happening and list out some of the issues that have taken place that becomes a regular part of our conversation. One of the teams that I really like, one of their ideas was every Friday they have a values conversation, and they talk about where did we hit the mark and where did we miss the mark?

And it’s not about punishment or pointing or singling people out. It’s about keeping those values or those rules of engagement front and center and how can we be even better next week? And so, I think that that ingrains it into the conversation. And then the other piece is education, you know, bringing somebody in to talk about depression and anxiety and what’s the difference between the two? Most people have no idea what the difference is between the two. And what is it, you know, what does it look like when, you know, what do we mean when we talk about our EAP and what can we go to them for or, you know, how do we. How do we have a supportive mental health conversation with a family member, with a colleague? Right. So that’s the kind of education that we can bring in. How do we build our resiliency tool belt? Because it’s not just about dealing with the problem. It’s how can we give people the tools so that it doesn’t become these major issues. And so those are the types of education and. And that has to come from the top down as well as from colleague to colleague.

You know, it’s great. Companies put in programs of any kind, and then the leadership doesn’t support the program. They don’t come to the programs, they don’t, you know, they don’t champion them. That speaks volumes to the rest of the team.

Yeah, absolutely. And so, I’d love to touch on the topic of toxicity and how do you address it? How do you deal with toxicity in a workplace?

For me, this is a great topic, I should say. I love talking about this, which sounds very weird, but I’m seeing so much of it happening right now, and it’s probably one of my biggest presentations that’s being requested for consulting because we haven’t been taught, again, how to deal with people who are negative and difficult and toxic. So, toxicity. We know that toxic workplaces breed toxic employees, and toxic employees breed toxic workplaces. So, we’re continually impacting and infecting each other. And we’ve seen that happen. Somebody comes in and they’re in a terrible mood, and it just ripples out to everybody else in the team as the day goes on. So, it is important that we address it. And as leaders, what I would say is that your job is to protect the rest of the team. And I think what happens is if that person is. They may be a leader themselves, they may have a lot of the knowledge, they may have some seniority, and we don’t know how to deal with them. And we don’t want to lose some of that knowledge. So we tolerate them and we put up with them, but we know that that, again, just bleeds out into every other aspect.

Right. You know, just it sticks to everybody else around. And so, it’s. Stepping into these conversations, I go back to what I talked about before, about the values. You can’t hold somebody accountable if you haven’t defined what the values are. What does it mean to work in this team? And when you’ve done that, that’s when you can go back to that person and say, hey, this is what it means to work on this team, to be a Contributor on this team. And these are the behaviors that are not working right. I often like to use the this is where you’re doing well and this is where you’re not doing so well, or this is what’s working and this is what, what’s not working so that we reinforce what we want to see more of. And we know we start to address those things that are not appropriate in the workplace.

And so hugely important topics. We talked about mental well-being. We talked about toxicity in workplaces, which obviously bleeds over in the safety space. We talked about burnout, which obviously bleeds over in the safety space. What are some of the other benefits for organizations to really embrace these topics and driving forward movement?

Certainly, engagement is the biggest one, I would think, because when we, you know, when we address the toxicity appropriately or when we address the safety hazards appropriately, people can bring the very best of themselves to the workplace. And so, we know productivity goes up, we know creativity goes up. Innovation, collaboration, like all these great things happen. And if we’re looking at some of the chaos that we’re having to deal with in our organizations, we need people to be on point. We need people to bring the very best of themselves so that they can stay safe and so that we can deal with whatever is happening out in, in the world around us.

So, Beverly, knowing that it’s mental health awareness month, what can organizations do to bring this topic to life within their organizations?

Celebrate, Celebrate, celebrate. You know, it’s an opportunity to bring awareness to all these topics and it’s also an opportunity to help support people by giving them some resiliency tools. And it might be, it might be a health fair where you bring in some community agencies to talk about the resources that are there. It might be bringing in a speaker for a speaker lunch and learn series to highlight these in more depth. It might be mental health breaks. So, one of the resources on my website is, you know, what can you do on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday? Celebrate and bring awareness to it and, you know, have some fun with it. That’s what, you know, we talk about the, often the downside of safety and resiliency and mental health. But have fun with it. It is about a celebration and so bring the awareness to these issues but also celebrate the people that you have in your organizations.

Excellent. Thank you so much, Beverly. Beverly, if somebody wants to get in touch with you, how can they do that?

My website address is worksmartlivesmart.com and the email address is infoorksmartlivesmart.com and absolutely there are articles on the website. You know, there’s over 500 articles on mental health, leadership, resiliency, toxicity, and so if you want to see more of that, absolutely use those resources.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

Oh, you are so welcome. Thank you for this.

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

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

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We are excited to have John Toomey join the podcast this week to offer ideas to combat the three core injury drivers: stress, fatigue, and distractions. In this episode, John shares heartfelt personal experiences that focus on the importance of connecting and showing care for others. Tune in to learn inspiring ways to reduce serious incidents and increase personal well-being in the workplace through an intentional culture of care!

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Real leaders leave a legacy. They capture the hearts and minds of their teams. Their origin story puts the safety and wellbeing 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 John Toomey. He’s a workplace well-being thought leader out of Melbourne, Australia. He is also the global chairperson at the Global Workplace Wellbeing Initiative, part of the Global Wellness Institute in Miami. So, John, welcome to the show. Really excited to have you with me.

Hey Eric, it’s really good to be here, thank you for having me on this show.

Excellent. So, we’ve got an exciting episode, lots of themes to talk through. Why don’t you start out talking about your story? How did John get into this topic in this area?

Yeah, look, that’s a fair question. I mean I’m 62 years old and I did my first seminar in a workplace in 1984 because I was actually running fitness leader courses at night, teaching people to be gym instructors and somebody invited me to come and present at their company. I’ve done a lot of things in my life. I’ve worked in high performance roles in professional football for a long time, but I always had this incredible curiosity and I’ve always been one of those people if somebody gives me an answer to a question and it doesn’t land for me, I’ve got to keep looking till I learn. So that takes me to a place where I grasp things and understand them, complex things, and I have a skill to give it back to somebody in a simple way. So, I suppose my superpower of educating workforces in all areas of health and wellbeing, whether it be fatigue prevention, resilience mental wellbeing, all those personal, I suppose self-care topics and I’ve been doing a lot of that in white collar marketplaces. And then in 2008 when the GFC hit, my business evaporated overnight, and it took me a while to find my way into a new realm and that was through safety budgets because they needed the sort of education that I could deliver.

And I found my sweet spot because I grew up in a pub in working class area in Melbourne and I know how to speak to guys in those realms. So yeah, that’s an amazing journey that’s been going on for about twelve years now.

Nobody goes to a pub in Melbourne. I’ve never seen that occur.

No, never done. Never seen how many pubs have been turned into cafes now. Really?

So, we touch on fatigue. Why don’t we start there in terms of the physiology of fatigue and some of the key highlights there because we know fatigue is in a very strong era precursor. If we’re fatigued, we’re more likely to make a mistake. It’s been researched and documented in aviation, but lots of other spaces. So maybe let’s start there.

Yeah, look, it’s a great place to start. And there’s been so much work done really pushing and shoving companies to come up with better off sing systems. And it’s been amazing, the work. And most companies have tried really hard to do everything they can to make it as easy as possible for the worker. Where I focus here on is the personal responsibility of the worker to know what creates fatigue in their universe. Right now, obviously, sleep is one and everybody knows you need to get plenty of sleep and good sleep. And if you’re not a good sleeper, you need to get help with it so that you can master the art of sleep. I mean, I could sleep for Australia, so we help people with that. But there’s a couple of hidden ones. And probably the most significant is dehydration. And this is one that gets skimmed over time and time and time again. And to not go into too much detail around physiology because it takes a bit of time, but basically your body’s trying to get rid of heat all the time and it uses water to do it. Sure, it traps heated molecules of water and those molecules of water end up going to your sweat glands or to your lungs.

Every time you breathe out, you pass out water vapor and all that water’s coming from your bloodstream. And if your blood’s not replenishing, the water level in your blood drops, your blood thickens, which then compromises the efficiency of your circulation. And as soon as that happens, you stop getting adequate blood flow to your brain. And when your brain is not getting enough blood, it’s not getting enough oxygen or glucose. And the very first reflex response that your body kicks into is a yawn because it’s trying to blow off carbon dioxide and get oxygen in. And what happens to most people when they start yawning? They go looking for something to give them a Pick-me-up. So, they might have a coffee or.

A dehydrate or more exactly, or they.

Go those energy drinks, which are even more of a disaster, and they come back to their workstation, and they feel better. But that was because they walked, and the walking pushed their blood pressure up. Now, the challenge for people who are doing manual work, because they’re working physically, their blood pressure is up high, so they can be getting really, really dehydrated and not get that first symptom. And eventually, the second symptom of dehydration is when you haven’t fixed the problem, the body wants to get you horizontally and slow the metabolic rate to reduce heat production. And so, the second symptom is sleepiness. And that’s why people fall asleep at the wheel of motor vehicles. They’re just dehydrated. But again, if somebody is working hard, they can crash into heat stress because they become so critically dehydrated, there’s just not enough water in their body. And to give you a bit of an example of that, I was working with some guys who do road maintenance out in the north of South Australia. And sometimes in the summer out there, the temperatures hover around 50 degrees centigrade.

Just a little bit warm. Very hot.

Yes. For those who are not quite sure what that would be, that’s about 100- and 2223-degrees Fahrenheit. And so some of these guys I was working with, by 04:00 in the afternoon, they were so dehydrated, their urine was dark orange, and they had already consumed 15 liters of water. So, it’s critical. And the tip I give, I mean, I give people a tip that you should drink a liter of water for every 25-body weight per day. But if you’re out working in exposed conditions and it’s hot, you need to drink enough water so that you’re having a big urination every couple of hours and it’s close to watercolor.

Sure.

For some workers, that’s 20 liters of water a day. And obviously, if you’re drinking that amount of water, you also need to supplement minerals. So yeah, dehydration. If most organizations really focused on that one, they would clean up a lot of their fatigue problems.

Interesting. So is this something you talked about, personal responsibility. How do you convey this to an organization? Is it something you train workers to do? How do you touch on it? How do you get into the personal responsibility side?

Yeah, see, the thing is, people are not dumb, right? And when I go into an organization and I give them I’ve got a group of construction workers in front of me, for example, I could have 200 construction workers sitting there in the room, and I take them step by step through the physiology of dehydration, and they recognize the symptoms. They know they have yawning attacks. They know they get sleepy when they’re driving their car in the afternoon. The penny drops for them. And when I give them the instructions as to how to fix it, they just can’t do it. In fact, I’ve had sites where managers have rung me up and said, you won’t believe what I saw today. One of the old gnarly, old blokes, they were loading up the truck to head out to the job, and one of the young blokes turned up and was about to get onto the truck, and the old bloke said, where’s your water bottles? Knocking on this truck without your water bottles? And the thing is, somebody who has been battling dehydration, as soon as they start drinking heat and water, their energy levels go through the roof, so they get instantaneous knowledge of results.

Sure.

So, it’s pretty cool. Yeah. And then it just becomes an easy life habit for them.

Okay, so you touched as well in terms of personal responsibility, how do you drive that within an organization? And I know you’re going to have a pretty incredible story fairly soon from a Melbourne construction project, but tell me about a little bit in terms of how do you drive personal responsibility in an organization?

Yeah, so it’s a really interesting thing, and this is an education thing, and it’s a buy in thing for everybody, and it’s a bit of a process. I’ll give a two-hour seminar on this where I talk to guys through it, but basically anything that shows up in my universe is mine. That includes the response I create to something. So, for example, I could be sitting there, and you could walk into the room and start yelling at me and insulting me.

Sure. Not likely, but we could pretend I.

Could blame you for destroying my day.

Yes.

The reality is the response that I created to you doing that to me, that’s my response. I could also have a compassionate response like, wow, what’s happening with Eric today? I hope he’s okay, but we become reactive, and being reactive is no good because you’re out of control. Then people really get this when you actually stop to take note of how you’re responding to things. Even when you and I use storytelling to give guys examples, I say to them, how many of you have ever had somebody cut you off in the traffic and you decided it was your job to teach them a harsh lesson on why you shouldn’t do the traffic. And of course, they’ll put their hands up, and I said, well, think of a time when somebody got caught up in the traffic and they’ll contemplate that. And I said, how do you know that person’s child just didn’t just die? You don’t know. Your mind jumps to all sorts of conclusions because you’re in a reactive state. And the thing is, just by hearing that lecture, that doesn’t take you out of a reactive state. But in the workforce, everybody can help each other a little bit and go, man, you’ve been a bit reactive at the moment.

What’s going on? And it can be compassionate. It can be done with kindness and friendliness to the point where everybody starts to get better at managing their own universe and not just being swept along by temptation and circumstance which can get.

You are also in harm’s way and in danger’s way the minute you start getting reactive. Because you’re not thoughtful and in tentful in terms of your actions.

Well, you know, I mean, I’m careful when I say this, but how many people are in prison in your country, in the US. In Australia, because of a moment of reactive madness? That’s the bottom line. And so as a society and as a community, it’s a good idea to help each other with our reactivity. Absolutely.

You had a great story when we first connected from football to me, connects really well with us. Maybe if you don’t mind sharing it, because I think it’s about the response that you give at one point in time, if it makes sense to jump into that one.

Well, yeah, it’s a good story and I do tell them about workplaces a lot because it’s a genuine wakeup call, and it was a huge wake up call for me. So, for any of your listeners that don’t know what Australian Rules Football is, pull up YouTube and just watch some highlight videos of Australian Rules Football. It’s the best game on the planet and it’s a very fast game and it’s played on a very big field. The fields about 200 yards long and 180 yards wide and it’s oval shaped and there’s no offside, so the players are spread all over the field. And after I finished working in football, I was in my early forties, I went back to play at a local level. And the thing about Australian Rules Football, it is played all over the place, suburban levels. It’s incredible. Anyway, we’re playing a game one day and the team we’re playing, we’re from a pretty tough working-class area of town. There was a guy on their team, big powerful guy, bodybuilder, and he was running around throwing Haymaker’s king, hitting people and getting behind packs and just throwing these punches, belting people from behind.

And I said to the umpire, what are you going to do about that? And the umpire said, just concentrate on your own game, which is umpires speak for I’m too scared to do anything. And fair enough, too, umpires are not big people. I thought to myself, well, I’m the big hero in this team. I’m the biggest. I’m 64 and I’m the most experienced. I’m going to have to pop this bloke off to sleep before he hurts somebody. So, I was running around looking for my opportunity to swing one of him and knock him out. And I must have been just starting to mature a little bit by then, Eric, you know, because I started to have second thoughts on that, and I started to think about the consequences of that action.

Sure.

And I realized that that would be a stupid thing to do because his teammates would then react to that, and it would be full on. So, when the quarter time siren went, I ran over to him and I said, excuse me, mate, you got a SEC? He Shaked up to me. I said, hey, I just want to talk to you. And he said, “What about? I said, Listen, mate, you don’t know me, but I’m a pretty good guy. And all my teammates, brilliant guys, some of them are dads, and their kids are here watching. And I said, look, I imagine you’re a really good guy too, and I imagine all your teammates are really good guys. So, I can’t understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, right? And I swear his face nearly fell off. And he looked at me and he said, oh, mate, I’m so sorry, mate. I can be such an idiot sometimes. I said, really? He goes, oh, I get carried away. I can be such an idiot at times. I don’t even think. I said wow. I said, “I’ll tell you what, put your fists away. Let’s have a good game of Fleet and I’ll buy your beer after the game.

And he goes, yeah, all right, mate. So off I trot and all I can hear behind me is him yelling out, Sorry, mate. So, the rest of the game, we had a great game. I can’t even tell you who won, but there’s a few times you’ve run past me and go, oh, well done, mate. Become an encouraging person. And anyway, after the game I was in the social rooms, and he came walking through the crowd with a couple of beers and handed me one. And I said, I was going to buy you the beer. And he said, oh, no, mate, I owe you the beer. And I said, why? And he said, “Because I’ve not enjoyed a game of footy like that since I was a little kid.

Oh, wow.

And he goes, no. He goes, I loved it out there today. And I said, well, you play a good game. Because I had attention on him. I saw the things he did, and I was able to rattle off a lot of things he’d done. I said, you’re a pretty good player. You should play like that more often. Yeah, you probably should. And the conversation went quiet, and I said, but how about that other stuff? How’s that working for you? And he said, yeah, they’re not pretty good. I said, do you have kids? And he said, “I’ve got three. And I said, do you see them? And he said, no, I don’t. And now for me, that’s heartbreaking, right? That is so heartbreaking. And I thought in that moment, what is his football club doing? Because that’s what football clubs are for, right? So, I said to him, I know a fellow who specializes in working with guys like you. Would you like some help? And he said, I probably need it, don’t. I said you better do. So I went through the process, connected him up with my mate on Monday, hooked him up, and about eleven months later I got a text from my mate and the text just said he’s seen his kids this weekend.

Oh, well.

And as I say to the guys in the seminars, not everybody who’s behaving like an idiot is an idiot, right? So, there’s so much care that we can take of people and the ones who are behaving the worst, they probably need the most care, right?

And I think it’s a powerful story because you could have responded first for first you could have been aggressive. You were about to go down that path, just like the person who cuts you off responding, but instead you leaned in, showed care and tried to connect with them and obviously had a lasting impact in his life.

Yeah, well, it’s like, I could have done it, eric and I would probably still be a legend at Red Hill Football Club today, but he’d be dead. Right.

So, I think it’s very powerful story in terms of personal responsibility and the choices that you make, but in terms of how we show care in an organization, absolutely.

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 [email protected].

So, tell me more about this culture of care, because in safety, we talk about this all the time, the importance of actively caring. You talk about this quite often. You just shared a story around caring. What does it mean culturally to show active care?

Yes. It’s so interesting, Eric, and it’s something that disappears in wealthy societies, and I’m going to justify that. So, if I go back, even if you go to cast your mind back 200 years to where you live right now and think about your forefathers and your four mothers living in those times, there was a lot to pay attention to. Just having water supply was difficult and required constant maintenance. Having a roof over your head that was going to survive when the snow came in, that required constant maintenance. How do you grow your food? How do you manage? How do you care for your crops, your animals, their pens? What do you do with sewage? And so, when people stepped out their front doors in the morning, life demanded their attention. So, their attention went out into the world to monitor, to notice. But it wasn’t just themselves, it was their neighbors as well, the community. You walk down the street, you check things all the time, and when your attention is out in the world, your mind’s not busy, right? But when was the last time you arrived home and put your key in your front door and stopped for a moment and had an anxious thought about the welfare of one of your neighbors?

The reality is, in the modern world, everyone’s okay, everyone’s got a safe place to sleep, they’ve all got food, so we don’t really need to worry about anybody.

Right?

But the problem is, the dangers are different now. It’s not the physical survival stuff, it’s the survival of the self, the mental survival, the spiritual survival, I suppose. Because what’s happening when life’s not demanding your attention, your attention wanders. And there’s lots of people out there working as hard as they can to seduce it. And probably the biggest master of seduction in the blue-collar industry are the betting apps. The gambling apps, sure. The thing is, when I was growing up in Collingwood, if you wanted to place a bet, you have to walk out the door, walk down the street, round the corner to go into the bedding shop, so everybody knew you were having a bet and if they got close enough, they could see how much you were betting. But the reality is, you could have placed a bet while I’ve been talking, and no one would know. So, there’s all these things and Shaquille O’Neill and all these other luminaries are, you know, getting paid huge amounts of money to seduce young men and young women into gambling. And the problem is, they get themselves into trouble and then they try to hide it.

And so now they’re living life, all their attentions back in their mind, gnawing over their regret for their losses and how they’re going to get out of it and have a hidden problem from their partner or whatever. And so they’re stepping onto a worksite and none of their attention is on.

What’s going on around them, which then gets you at higher risk of an accident, because your attention is not on the task in front of you, it’s distracted.

Yeah. And even if you haven’t succumbed to any of those things, most people in the modern world, most of their attention is on themselves. They become very self-absorbed, then they focus on my rights, my rights, my rights. But we actually all have obligations as well. And so, what I’ve been teaching the workforce to do is to relearn how to live in a more virtuous way. Now, I’m not talking about being religious here, I’m talking about bringing kindness back as one of your tools of life. Bringing back encouraging others, acknowledging others, being grateful, you’re practicing all of these things. Because what happens is, you see, if I walk up to you and I’m really kind to you, I’m likely to reciprocate, but I feel good about who I am.

Right.

Like, I was just sitting on a plane in Perth, waiting to take off to Melbourne and there were people loading onto the plane. You know how some people can be very slow getting into their seat?

Really?

And there was a woman, I think it should be a subject at school, actually, how to get on a plane and get off the plane. But anyway, this woman was standing next to me, and I could feel her frustration rising.

Sure.

And she was obviously tired. It was the end of the day, and I could really feel her start to get really agitated. And I just looked at her and I said to her, “That is such a beautiful blouse that you’ve got on. And it was a beautiful blouse. And she goes, oh, thank you so much. Your favorite, isn’t it? And she goes, there it is. I really love it. Immediately. Right? And the guy next to me who runs all the indigenous employment affairs for a company that’s got 8000 employees, he just nudged me, and he goes, that was really cool. I saw what you did there. I feel good, she’s calmed down, she feels better. But when we do those things for others, yes, we give them something beautiful, but we can’t escape the fact that our own self-acceptance rises a little bit. And most people who have got mental health conditions, they’ve been in big time self-deprecation for a long time.

If you don’t mind, let’s pivot to your story about Melbourne. It was a Melbourne construction project where you brought in a culture of care, and I think it was a very powerful story. Can you share that story similar to your football story? I think this is very important.

One to COVID Yeah, sure. We can give people a link to this. I actually published this on Huffington Post, but yeah, see, Melbourne has had a huge program going for the last eight years or so, because Melbourne seven times the world’s most livable city. But its Achilles heel is level crossings. Train crossings where boom gates come down and stop traffic so trains can go through. And so, Melbourne’s train network hit usable peak 30 years ago. And they couldn’t schedule any more trains in the rush hour, peak hour, because if they did, it would send the city into gridlock. And so, we’ve had a very efficient train system, so the only thing that could be done was get rid of those level crossings and there’s over 200 of them. So, this program started and so some of the level crossings, they’ve gone over and some that have gone under. And on this particular project, there were three level crossings. And they call this a package. And so in this job, they had to do all the preparation work, get everything ready, so much to be done. Probably took 18 months to do the preparation work. And then they have what they call an occupation, or effectively known as an Akko, right?

And in the occupation, they close the train line, and they go to, and they do the work. And so, in this occupation, they had 63 days to tear up the train lines, tear down three train stations, dig a valley that amounted to the biggest removal of earth in urban Melbourne history. They had to turn three roads into bridges, they then had to lay new train lines, new overhead cables, and build three new train stations, basically underground. And they had 63 days to do it. And there were going to be a thousand people working on site around the clock. Anyway, I was going past the site office, and I thought I would drop in because I’ve done some seminars for them, and I dropped in. I wanted to see the safety manager and he’s busy. So, I was just walking around chatting to some of the guys and you would have sworn that they’d been told they were going to be facing the firing squad. They were anxious, they were stressed, they were agitated, very reactive. And each one I went to, I thought, oh, my God, this is a disaster. So, I went and knocked on the project manager’s door.

Steve is a beautiful guy, really competent, great leader. And he looked up and he said, John, come in. So, I walked in, and he said, “what’s going on? I said, Steve, somebody’s going to die on this project. And he looked at me and he said, “What do you think? And I said, I’ll bet money on it. And he said, why? I said, because they’re all so stressed out there, you can’t go into this project with them like that. And he said, yeah, I know. What can we do? And I said, you need to get him in a room next week. I want to talk to him. So, we got hundreds of guys in, and I got up and had to talk to them. And I talked to them about what makes a great city. And really the fundamental, the skeleton and the circulatory system of a great city is its infrastructure. We talked about roads, and we talked about sewerage and electricity, and then we talked about train lines, and then I talked about how Melbourne’s archeries are blocked because of these level crossings. And the vital nature of this work was to unclog the arteries of Melbourne. So, I then started to paint the picture of what things were going to look like when these guys finished their job.

And I said, all those people who are stuck in commuter traffic in the mornings, they’ll be able to get on the train and they’ll get a seat on the train because they’ll be able to run trains from the major destinations every two- or three-minutes during rush hour. I said, that means they’re going to get to work quicker, they’ll be more refreshed, they might have been able to knock off some work on the train. I said, they’ll get home quicker, and they’ll be home earlier, which means they get to spend more time with their kids. It means that they get to get more involved in the community sports clubs, so more adults nurturing more kids, and that creates more stable families. And I just kept painting this picture and those kids are going to be able to grow up and live in that area and raise their families as well. And it’s going to create this beautiful, amazing city of incredible communities because people have got more time and they’re not stressed and they’re able to move around the city more quickly. And I said, so you guys are laying the foundation for one of the most incredible cities the world will ever see.

Now, it took me an hour. To paint that picture and take it on that journey. But by the end of it, they were all up on their feet, like, can we start now? And they were so filled with purpose. Anyway, the project started and why it went. It became the biggest tourist attraction in Melbourne for the next couple of months. There were people queued up five deep around the fence watching the project. There was not a single accident, there was not an hour lost for anything. And the only two complaints were two slightly negative tweets about the bus service that was replacing the trains. And they completed it in 61 and a half days under budget.

Wow. And it’s all by painting a picture of purpose, creating pride in the work in terms of driving that impacts very powerful stories. In the last little bit, you’ve talked to us about three of the main drivers of injuries. Stress, you’ve talked about fatigue, and you’ve talked about distractions. And all bring themes and ideas from well-being, but that ultimately impact recordable injuries that ultimately impact serious incidents, because we know that those three drivers are two very important drivers of safety outcomes. So, really cool ideas, principles here. I’d love to pivot to your book. You’ve published a book in it for the long haul. Tell me a little bit about the book, the story, and why somebody should pick it up on Amazon or whichever retailer you use.

Actually, I just sold it off my website, actually. But it’s really interesting. In Australia, we call it FIFO. So, it’s fly in, fly out. But there’s remote workshops all over the world. And you said it earlier, Eric. There’s oil and gas platforms all over the world and the mines up in the north of Canada and remote mines in South America and Africa. And people are leaving home, going away for a specified period of time and working remotely, living in camps and then going home again for a period of time. And it’s become really significant in the last 30, 40 years as the world’s demanded more resources, sure, but people have been going away from home to work for a very long time. As I say to the FIFO workers, when you fly across Australia, if you look out the window of the plane, you see that there are roads down there. Have you ever asked yourself how those roads got there when they did that? But anyway, what’s been happening here in Australia? There’s a lot of suicides on fiber work sites and there’s a lot of relationship breakdowns and there’s a lot of stress and mental illness and that sort of thing.

And I’ve been traveling out there delivering seminars and I know the lay of the land and my life as well. Prior to COVID I was traveling 240 days of the year around Australia to North America, and I was living out of a suitcase. So now it’s like to be away from home and anyway, I heard about another suicide, and I just thought, man, I got to do something. I ran a survey, and it was amazing. Like, 60% of the workers who responded to the survey said they went out to start their FIFO role with no plan. It was amazing. And so, I thought, I know how to do this. And so, I wrote a book. It’s a 250 odd page book. And I wrote about all of the things that come into play to teach these guys and their families how to really master the skill of being a successful FIFO worker. To turn it into something really, really good. Because they get paid a lot of money, and if they do it right, they can do it for five years, ten years, and set themselves up for life. So, I wrote the book and the response to it has been great.

I’m really just trying to push some of the big companies now to buy it in bulk and get it to all of their people so that they can really help. The thing is, I know for sure that some guys won’t read it, but they might take it home and their partner will read it. Sure. Somebody in the house gets those skills. And what’s more, the ones who do read it on site will have more understanding and knowledge to help their workmates.

Sure.

So that was the purpose of it. And that’s the COVID of the book there. And it was so interesting. When I got the COVID design, I told the designer what I wanted, a young Indian guy off that website, fiver. And I talk in the book a lot about finding your light at the end of the tunnel, your purpose in your life, your passion. And also talk about taking care of your mates so they don’t go off the rails. Now, I didn’t say any of that to him. He’s come back with this picture of these miners standing with their backs to the light. Some of them are on the rails and some of them are off the rails. It’s beautiful.

Very cool. So, John, thank you so much for joining us. I think you’ve shared some very interesting, provocative ideas, again, against at least three key drivers of serious injuries that I can think of. If somebody wants to get in touch with you, talk about these themes and how do you bring wellbeing, how do you bring some of these concepts to the workplace? How can they get in touch with you?

Yeah, certainly I’m easy to find on LinkedIn and also my website is Wideawakewellness.com Au for Australia. There’s lots of resources there and I’m more than happy to connect in with somebody and have a bit of a chat if they want, because at the end of the day, this is about my whole mission in life, is making sure that every kid on the planet has a good life. That means mum and dad coming home from work and coming home from work in a good mood, feeling good, very powerful.

And remember those stories you shared? I think they’re very powerful. The football story, the Melbourne construction project, and then the lady who is getting frustrated and agitated on the plane. I think we can all think about some additional ways to bring some acts of kindness and care for others. So, appreciate you sharing those stories. Thank you again for joining us.

Thank you, Eric. It’s been really cool, and you do great work, mate. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening to the Safety Guru on C suite Radio. Leave a legacy. Distinguish yourself from the pack. 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 [email protected]. Come back in two weeks for the next episode with your host, Eric Michrowski. Podcast is powered by Propulo Consulting.

ABOUT THE GUEST

John Toomey is an International Speaker and Thought leader who delivers seminars that inspire, educate, and empower people to take 100% responsibility for their lives, wellness and mental wellbeing. His impressive background in High Performance Roles in Professional Sport, including 7 AFL Clubs, and Culture Development roles in two A League Clubs, and as Coach of an Olympic Gold Medalist, brings richness and depth to his presentations. John holds a Phys Ed degree from Deakin University, did his Masters Studies in Applied Physiology at Victoria University, studied and taught Human Consciousness as an Avatar Master for 15 years, is a published author and has lectured at multiple Universities in PE and Medicine. Currently, John is Global Chair of the Global Wellness Institute’s Workplace Wellbeing Initiative, the world’s premier advisory group on Workplace Wellness. He’s delivered over 3,300 Corporate Presentations, spoken at Conferences worldwide, written hundreds of published articles, and completed 4 National Thought Leadership Tours for QBE. He recently published a book, “In It For the Long Haul: Making the Most of the FIFO Lifestyle,” his effort to reduce the amount of mental illness and suicides on remote worksites across Australia.

For more information:

Website: http://wideawakewellness.com.au

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johntoomey-thoughtleader/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@wideawakewellness