The Safety Link Podcast by Kenyon Manley

Cultivating Safety and Balance: Insights from Perry Silvey, a Seasoned Safety Professional

• Kenyon

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Ever wondered how successful professionals maintain a work-life balance while ensuring safety in their field? Join us this week as we have Perry, a seasoned safety professional, who shares his intriguing strategies on managing work, family and personal care. Touched by faith, Perry starts his day with a sprightly morning routine and makes sure to have separate 'date days' with his daughters. He offers a refreshing take on how to counterbalance family time with high-demand occupations, and the significance of self-care in this mix.

Beyond that, we dive into Perry's perspective on cultivating a safety culture within his organization. Hear from him on the critical role of empowering employees to voice their concerns before an incident happens, and the importance of understanding an individual's risk tolerance to build a safety-focused environment. Perry highlights the significance of fostering trust and relationships in the workplace to ensure safety- a lesson he has learned from his rich experience in the field. Tune in to gain some truly eye-opening insights on creating a harmonious blend of safety, professionalism, and family life.

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Speaker 2:

In our business when I think about safety professionals, I always like to highlight who are those people?

Speaker 1:

I think they're mothers, fathers, law enforcement firemen, people behind the scenes like people who sell PPE. They're a piece of us. And then the connection with the foreman superintendent nurses. You know all these people that have to take care of somebody when it comes to their lives, right, and I think we work as a big part of our day. So when you talk about eight, 10, sometimes 12 hours, you only have 12 more hours left. You have to sleep, you have your family, you got to eat. It's very hard, perry, in what we do, to come to work with too much on your mind. I guess what I wanna ask you how is it that when you, you know what does your day, how does your day start? Do you take a breather in the morning? I know you're a Christian. I don't know if you read your word in the morning. I know I do, but you know what do you do to get your day started off so that you're prepared to serve people.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely so. Yeah, the first thing I do when I get up is I do have the daily verse that comes up on my Bible app, that you version app, and it is something that I do every morning. I wanna make sure that that's how I start my day, and a little bit of prayer and just, yeah, get going on my day starting with that. So, yeah, I am a Christian and I'm very proud to be serving you know an amazing God, and, yeah, it's an important part of my day because it does. It starts it out in such an important way that, yeah, nothing goes first. That's it. That's the first thing that happens in the morning for me.

Speaker 1:

Super, super, super important. This was the attractive thing that I think when me and Perry first met. You know, sometimes you know the spirit when they hit each other. It's a feeling man, and it's a genuine feeling and there's really nothing we can do about it. But when it's living in somebody that's so important, it's cause it's nothing fake. You know, you have really have no control over it when it comes out. So when they meet up it's something nice. So really, really again glad to have you. I know you said you're married, you got a family some kids tell us about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, my wife Stephanie. We've been married, let's see, coming up on 19 years, and we've known each other since 98, when we started going to college together. And then, yeah, after college, we started dating and then got married in 2004. And we didn't have kids for eight years. So we now have two girls. Zora is 12, or sorry, she's 11. And so it seems like she's going on 20.

Speaker 1:

I know that feeling.

Speaker 2:

And Hazel is eight years old. She's actually turning nine here in October. Yeah, these girls are amazing. So one quick thing I wanna share that this is something that you and I haven't talked about, but just something really cool. That we're doing is I like to do date night or date day with each one of my daughters, and the way we make it work is the first Saturday of each month is my wife, we go on a date, and then the second Saturday of the month is my oldest daughter, zora, and then the third Saturday is my youngest daughter, hazel.

Speaker 2:

And then the fourth Saturday is family day night or day day, whatever we decide to do and then on the fifth Saturday if there is a fifth Saturday, that's my day. I get to do what I want. So you know, video games. Whatever I decide to do is something I get to do on the fifth, which is usually two or three times a year at most. But it's a fun thing we've been doing for a few years now and it's a way for me to be able to get a little closer to my daughters each separately and be able to have that special time with each one of them. So it's a fun thing I get to do there with my daughters, you just gave us some strategies here.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes. You know I've been married for 23. And well, tell her congrats, because you know my first five years was, you know, because of me. You know was rough man and I'm sad to say that, but it is what it is. Man, and definitely we've grown.

Speaker 1:

But what you talk about you know really mixing it up in your life Because at the end of the day, we come to work, we go home, they see us less than our work does and we've got to really be. What do you want to say? You've got to make sure you make time for the family. However it is that you do, I really like what you had. You separate that relationship and you spend that time.

Speaker 1:

But when I think, when the kids and the wife are made important, those extra four hours that you may not be there, it doesn't even matter, because they know that when their time is up, dad, husband, is dedicated to me and they're making sure they're making time for me. So I really think that's important because all the way from the craft on up, we work major hours, especially during the summer, and sometimes it can create relationship issues, whether it's with the kids, the wife or whatever it may be. So what you just hit on is like these are the things that we need to give the people that we call our brothers and sisters, these safety professionals that you. There's nuggets that I hope that we can get out of this podcast right, and it doesn't always have to be something that's breaking down a cut or whatever.

Speaker 1:

It's these other things that I don't know if you talk enough about them, and it's also these things that cause these this new mental thing, this new mental health and wealth and all these things. So I'm really glad that you brought that up about your family and how you make sure you are deliberate with making time for them Awesome. The other thing I wanna talk about is so you came up with a great idea, a great move for empowerment because, like we were talking earlier last year, double the year before, which was 2021, in deaths, and I would, if I can remember, three or four of those were here and there's a lot in Colorado, you know, and I'm glad OSHA, I'm glad the government is sort of picking up on the responsibility and the accountability of frontline supervisors, owners and people that are watching this very thing happen.

Speaker 1:

And I think it's so important you, me, everybody out there watching that we have to begin to make sure that when there's an accident happening, people are standing around watching it. They are just as accountable. And how do we motivate and empower them to speak up before and not after? Do you run into seeing? When you come to the incident, you find out that like three or four guys might have seen something and it's like they're really not involved, but they are, because we always talk about you have the right to say no or stop work or this responsibility that we really want our people to have, right if you see something, say something, that culture that really takes time for an organization to really instill that in their people.

Speaker 2:

It's not gonna happen overnight. And that's part of what our job is in safety is to help really change that mentality. Or look at these guys and show them the importance of a life and really show them what that risk is on that for that job that they're doing, that they could get hurt or they could get killed, and really understand that not having that risk tolerance Right.

Speaker 1:

You know, when we talk about risk tolerance it's some people don't understand that a lot. You know what that is, some of it's. You know part of how we were brought up, what we do, what we're into it's really what I find for myself is that when you got a guy with a high risk tolerance, my, I guess my strategy is to teach the foreman or the superintendent to recognize that. Some of the things that I recognize. That may be simple stuff, but it's like when you see a guy continually walk over a hazard, it's gonna become a problem at one point. Sometimes I think that I used to be that foreman, that superintendent.

Speaker 1:

You get so overwhelmed with what is the priority. I just had that one day say that at the end of the day, I'm working for a company who believes in safety, so I need to be. I need to have that first in mind and, plus, that's my job, right? So really trying to, like you said, just trying to reach out to it, it really does. It's sometimes frustrating.

Speaker 1:

It's nice to see progress but man, you're right, man, that culture thing really it really takes time and you gotta do the right things and if anything goes wrong it sets you back very quickly whether you've been working on this thing for months, years, and if one of them don't trust you, man, it falls out, it falls off, and then you gotta pick it back up to try to run that through. So, going back to this, thinking inside the box. I was thinking about this last night and you know, I mean it's crazy that thinking inside the box and thinking outside the box right, there's these two sayings that we brought up when I was really thinking deep on this and what I was thinking was it's like us as safety professionals and anybody who's dealing with the plan of work.

Speaker 1:

We sort of really have to be thinking outside the box prior to them getting in the box, because I think that if we can keep them thinking inside the box, we take the constraints that actually make you think outside of the box, which we don't want them to do. So I really I guess you know going into this whole thing, did you ever really think that thinking inside the box had a constraint to you?

Speaker 1:

That's a great question, because when you, I didn't mean to cut you off, but when you're constrained or you're put into a place where you need to think about some options, now you're going to innovate. The problem with that innovation is is it the right innovation? Because our people, we know they're a get it done type of mentality. Shall we say right, they're creative, they're very creative, but we need to make sure that they think inside the box. Call us involve some people to make sure that's the right thing to do than to be spontaneous on being creative, because sometimes that creativity might have been okay but some corners weren't covered.

Speaker 2:

So when you were thinking about this.

Speaker 1:

Did that ever come to mind?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the little meaning. With think inside the box I mean the obvious think inside the trench box and think inside a safety device that's intended to protect an employee and it could be a shoring system. But the original intent was a trench box because that's the most common device, the easiest device to get our hands on in our world. But it's also the concept of thinking inside the box. We don't have to think outside the box, we don't have to think about new, creative ideas. This system that's been installed over and over and over works, so use what works. Think inside the box because it works, because this system has already been designed by an engineer. It's already something that can work and will work if it's used. That's the important aspect of think inside the box. Is that double meaning and how important it is to utilize a system that works.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that's powerful. So when this actually started, I was in a situation where come up on a scene and guys were in the box, but there were some things that were going on outside, about a foot and a half outside Right, and when you look outside the box and you look at the edges, you can tell they're not very stable. So the innovation of the form and he stayed inside the box. What he did was is he put marks inside the trench box so that guys knew that I don't want you to go past this line. And, man, it made a very, very big difference because guys felt that okay, maybe I got my legs in and I'm just going to just create just a little bit, you know.

Speaker 1:

But this here it created a boundary, is what it did, and they were able to grasp it and utilize it throughout the rest of the project and, like you said, staying inside that box, it works. You know, I just got to tweak something because you think, just because you're here, okay, well, I'm going to take a foot away from you. Okay, I'm going to take a foot away from you. Let me catch you going past here and I'm going to keep you accountable to that.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's normalizing what is actually the compliance level, whereas what typically happens on the job site is they're normalizing a little bit of deviance, right Normalization of deviance Right and a little bit of change over time turns into large changes where people could get hurt.

Speaker 2:

Right, you know like an example would be. Well, they left that trench box off the floor. Maybe at first it's at two feet, because that's what the rule is, but then all they're tweaking it up to two and a half feet, maybe up to three feet at times, and before you know it, each time it gets higher and higher, and then all of a sudden you're at four foot of exposure and now it's really dangerous, right, and now you have to try to communicate to the team like guys, that's not the way we do things. So it takes a lot of times, some time, for that type of deviance to start adding up to being something very dangerous, whereas you know that risk tolerance is allowing that deviance and allowing that normalization of that new standard, that new system that they're getting used to over time, because they've seen that positive reinforcement of negative behaviors, and those continue to change their normal, and their normal is now getting more and more dangerous as they go but they don't realize it because they're tolerant to that risk, right.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that's where the care factor comes in, you know, because most of the time you know when you go to the job you always got those ones right. They want to talk, they want to do the right thing, they want to make sure, but they don't. They're not ready to speak up yet, but they're bringing up some things that, like you said, can materialize into a big situation. And my brother always says that nobody cares about what you have to say until you show how much you care. And creating that relationship as a safety professional is so important because now you have another eye that is helping you make the environment, the company, the culture a little more safer, a little better. And now you're gaining ground through the relationship. And how is it that over time you've gained the relationships that you're gaining? Because I think that care factor in that relationship is very key to our system, because you and me both know that we can't be everywhere at the same time.

Speaker 2:

Right, really good point. And relationships are so key and it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to work on those relationships and you get to know them, you get to know their family and you get to know some of their ticks. What are some of the things that make them tick? Could be something as simple as this guy likes that special safety glass, that and you're able to remember that and take care of these guys in a special way. And if they ask for something, then you follow through. So you create trust in that relationship and it starts to grow over time. So such an important part of our job is to build trust and really take care of these people, because they are people, they are, they have families, they have a livelihood and we show that we care, we truly care about them because of all these things that we do to show that we care.

Speaker 1:

Very, very important, very, very important. I always say relationships are worth more money than you can ever imagine. It's really helped me. I think another thing that helped me personally too, is you don't know everything out there, right, when you start asking the craft of hey, how did you do that? And being interested in exactly what they're doing, it helps out.

Speaker 1:

Every once in a while, getting involved just for a little bit, maybe help the guys and, like you said, really trying to find out who's who, what do you like, what does he like, because that's the conversation they need. I'm a believer that every time I come on site, I don't need to be talking about safety, because in the reason why I say that, I say that to say that sometimes you gotta make people, you gotta let people know they're important and if I can let you know you're important, safety will sneak its way in on you because you're gonna start caring about yourself. You're gonna start caring about what I think about you and you're gonna start caring about what other people are thinking about you, and it's gonna help guide you into a certain way when it comes to being able to execute when the light isn't shining on you, and that's where we gotta get to is like when somebody is doing the right things in dark places.