Safety Third? Brutal Truths from a Career in Safety

Transcript

[00:01:28] Josh Santo: Today’s guest brings more than 15 years of safety and quality leadership across manufacturing, construction, and even military service. Over the course of his career, he’s held roles ranging from EHS, director to Safety and QualToday’s guest brings more than 15 years of safety and quality leadership experience across manufacturing, construction, and even military service.

Throughout his career, he’s held roles ranging from EHS Director to Safety and Quality Control Manager, building deep expertise in OSHA compliance, hazard analysis, and continuous improvement.

He’s also an OSHA 511 and 501 certified trainer — meaning he doesn’t just enforce safety; he empowers others to lead it.

Along the way, he’s driven environmental impact reductions, earned advanced training credentials, and brought his U.S. Marine Corps discipline to creating safe, healthy workplaces.

He now serves as Safety Manager for Morrow Steel, a leading fabricator and erector of steel structures and miscellaneous metals in the southeastern United States, where he focuses on construction safety, training, compliance, and auditing.

Please welcome to the show, Bruce Gane.

[00:02:25] Josh Santo: Welcome, Bruce. Thanks for joining us on the show today.

[00:02:28] Bruce Gane: Thanks, Josh.

[00:02:30] Josh Santo: Yeah, it’s great to finally get a chance to connect. I know we’ve scheduled this a time or two, but life and work happen. I’m really excited to pick your brain on the topic of safety — specifically how to effectively manage it within manufacturing.

So, Bruce, I’m going to start this conversation the same way we start every episode. I want to know what it’s like to walk a day in your shoes. Tell us — what does a typical day look like for you as a Safety Manager in manufacturing?

[00:03:01] Bruce Gane: Well, actually, it’s a 24/7 job when you’ve got shifts running around the clock. We’ve got transportation and construction to manage, and general industry to support. One week, I’m wondering what to do for 40 hours — and the next week, I don’t know how to keep it under 60. The needs of every organization seem to ebb and flow unpredictably.

Typically, when a company reaches about a hundred employees, that’s when they start looking to hire a full-time safety professional. At one company I worked for, we had over 200 employees, and I was still the only safety professional on staff.

When employees join an organization I work for, they receive safety orientation based on their roles and what OSHA and the EPA require. We make sure they understand both the legal requirements and our own internal standards, which go above the minimum.

After that initial training, it’s up to supervisors to provide on-the-job training. I go around and audit those employees regularly — you trust that the training’s happening, but you verify. I also assess the safety culture: what’s the temperature? Are people focused on it or not? And from there, I make adjustments as needed.

[00:04:33] Josh Santo: So you mentioned that some weeks you’re not really sure what to do, and other weeks you’re not sure how you’ll keep the workload under 60 hours. You also said you spend time going around and auditing to verify that training’s being done. What else typically takes up your time as a Safety Manager?

[00:04:55] Bruce Gane: Well, there are the incidents. We don’t call them accidents — an accident is something that’s out of control. An incident, on the other hand, is usually preventable. In fact, over 97% of injuries — depending on which statistics you look at — are preventable.

So, when there’s an incident, we conduct an investigation. That means getting together with the different stakeholders — maybe the supervisor, the employee, or even higher management — and using the ‘Five Whys’ method.

What’s the problem? Someone got injured. Why did they get injured? Because of X, Y, or Z. Why did that happen? And you keep asking ‘why’ until you drill down to the one factor that would’ve made the difference — that’s your root cause.

Once you identify that root cause, the next question is: what are we going to do about it? You bring people together again, make suggestions, discuss possible solutions, and decide on corrective actions. Then you implement them.

Sometimes the fix takes five minutes; other times, it might take five months. And we’re not talking about blaming someone or saying, ‘this person needs to be fired.’ We’re talking about addressing policies, procedures, administrative gaps — maybe PPE was missing, maybe a process wasn’t clear. Those are the real issues that make the difference.

[00:06:41] Josh Santo: So in addition to auditing for whether or not training has not only been delivered but is being applied in the way it should be applied, people are behaving with safe behaviors, and you’re also assessing the safety culture. You’re helping guide root cause analysis into different incidents that may have occurred.

And I love that you clarified the difference between an incident and an accident. The incident, you’re really taking control—there are things that we could have done to prevent this from occurring. The accident, you’re describing as something that was more or less out of control—not something that could have been planned for or prepared for, just something that happened. So I like that distinction between the two.

And then you talked about guiding down the root cause analysis side of things. Are you leading the RCA? Are you…

[00:07:37] Bruce Gane: Absolutely.

[00:07:38] Josh Santo: …actively participating? So are you the one answering, or are you asking the questions? Talk to us about how you facilitate that…

[00:07:46] Bruce Gane: Well, when I was doing safety for a compressed gas company—I’ve been in the industry for about 20 years—I was definitely, I hate to say this, the smartest guy in the room, because there were people there who didn’t have as much experience and didn’t know what I knew or what I’d been taught. Then I left there and went to an organization that was making window film, and now I’m the student. I’m asking questions, but I’m still leading the charge in the sense that you need to ask—you don’t know what you don’t know—and keep asking questions, keep drilling down into the whys. So you’re still leading, even though you’re not the most knowledgeable person on the subject.

Where I am now, there are guys who have had 20 or 30 years of experience, and this is the first time I’ve ever worked for a structural steel company, so I’m the one who’s learning, listening, and asking questions when things happen.

[00:08:49] Josh Santo: Now, when you’re going about planning your day and responding to the ebbs and flows, are there any specific metrics or KPIs that you’re focused on managing or improving?

[00:09:03] Bruce Gane: Well, at 30,000 feet, how many injuries have we had? How many serious injuries have we had? There’s what you call reporting to OSHA, which means someone went to the hospital, someone lost a limb, or someone lost their life. Are we reporting? Have we had to report anything in the past before I was here? And what was it, and how did we resolve it?

And then there’s recording incidents. Recordable incidents mean that the injury went beyond first aid. So if we’re recording incidents, why? Where are those coming from? Let’s analyze. One place I worked, the majority—42%—of the injuries were lacerations to the hands. So, okay, where are these lacerations coming from? What’s the cause of them? Is there a common root cause? What can we do?

And then there are injuries that were first aid only, but didn’t have to be recorded to OSHA. But obviously, there’s still something wrong. There’s no reason for anybody to be injured at work.

And then there are near misses. That’s what we want to talk about—something that could have hurt someone, could have damaged property, could have caused a loss of some kind, but didn’t. It nearly happened—it’s a near miss. And that’s really where we want to be. We don’t want to have to report serious injuries, record injuries, or even talk about first aid injuries. We want to talk about near misses so that we catch it before it becomes an injury.

[00:10:57] Josh Santo: Yeah, the near miss is the leading indicator that you’re monitoring. And so, these different metrics—how do they then tie to that concept you described earlier, which is assessing the safety culture? How do those help you assess the safety culture?

[00:11:15] Bruce Gane: Well, if you’ve got an injury—or, most recently, I actually had one that had to be reported to OSHA—it was a fatality. And I had one of the supervisors respond to me and tell me, when I asked about it, that it was a freak happening. He said it could never happen again. And, you know, if that’s how he feels, maybe his subordinates feel the same way—that it’s no big deal, or that it’s something that couldn’t have been prevented.

At another job, I once had someone tell me, after I came back from vacation, “We’re really glad you’re back because you’re the only one that cares about our safety.” And that really makes you think about who their supervisor is and what’s going on to make them feel that way.

When you walk into a room and everybody starts putting their PPE on because you’ve walked in—I’ve had that happen—you realize people behave differently when safety shows up. Or when you walk onto a job site and someone hollers as a signal that “safety’s here,” almost like an alarm—that tells you you’re not where you want to be.

Sometimes it takes years to change that. The first place I ever worked in safety, I was called a cop. I was policing the area, and people said I was like a drill instructor—even though I never raised my voice. But when I left that job, there were zero injuries for the year. They threw a lunch for me and gave me fishing poles and a big card.

So for me, it’s about creating relationships. It’s about letting people know that I truly care about their safety and about them going home in one piece—and that we can do that. You don’t have to get hurt. You don’t have to die. That’s not acceptable.

[00:13:30] Josh Santo: That is such an important callout. It sounds obvious, but it’s a reality of certain types of work that there’s inherent risk—and if precautions are not followed or implemented, there can be devastating impacts on the people we’re asking to take on this type of risk. We owe it to them to make sure they’re able to, like you said, go home in one piece, and to really set the expectation that safety must be a priority—not just when the safety manager is around.

And I like that you used those examples to show how you can assess a company’s safety culture. That terrible incident—the fatality—and for it to just be brushed off as a “freak happening” or an accident, something that couldn’t have been prevented—that’s tough. Because, like you said, what does that mean for others? If it’s a “freak accident,” and there’s “nothing we could have done,” then it’s business as usual: keep your head down and keep going. And then the question becomes—who’s next?

The comment you got, “We’re glad you’re back because you’re the only one who cares about our safety”—what an indicator of how safety is treated when you’re not there. And the example of people warning others that safety is around, so they’d better put on their PPE—those are all indicators of a poor safety culture.

But if you see that, it means there are opportunities for improvement. Because at the end of the day, like you said, there should be one goal we all agree on: everyone goes home in one piece. You do not have to get hurt on the job. Let’s all work together to make sure that doesn’t happen.

I’ve heard that described as “Safety First.” So, Bruce, in your experience—is safety first?

[00:15:28] Bruce Gane: Oh man — you would go there. I was told at the first place I worked that it was “safety first.” The regional manager would come to town and say “safety first,” it was in every company policy, and anytime anybody talked, HR would talk about safety first. One day we had an incident, we resolved it, and I was sitting in the office with the facility manager. He said, “Safety’s not really first — you know that, right? It’s the money.” I thought, well, that’s just one guy, one conversation. Then I went to the next company and so many actions showed me it was about the money. Then I went to another company and once again it was about the money.

So for me personally, if you can’t do it without hurting yourself or somebody else, you need to find another way to do it. Once you are safe and performing your job without hurting anyone, do it with the best quality — what is the specification of the work you’re doing? Do the best quality you can. And then, lastly — really lastly — be productive. Now you’re doing it safely, doing good quality work; how many widgets can you pump out? How many rolls of film? How many gas cylinders can you fill? Do as many as you can. That’s my experience: in a lot of cases, safety comes third.

[00:17:23] Josh Santo: Safety third. So you said you got some real talk from someone in your past who pulled you aside and told you, “Let’s be honest, safety isn’t first—money is.” That idea, that it’s about the money—how so? What did you take that comment to mean, and how have you seen that be confirmed time after time?

[00:17:53] Bruce Gane: So, at that first facility, if we didn’t produce a certain amount—if we didn’t bring in X amount of dollars—your head was on the chopping block. If we had an injury or an incident, it was more like, “Okay, let’s be more careful,” but then right back to, “Hurry up and make some more money.” What gets measured gets done.

[00:18:22] Bruce Gane: And when the priority is production—that’s typically what it is—then that’s where the focus goes. Quality comes into play too, but even that ties back to money. If your quality is off, you’re in trouble. Why? Because it costs money. They’re not getting paid for those jobs; they’re reworking those jobs, which costs money.

[00:18:44] Bruce Gane: At that first place I worked, one unit coming through could be worth upwards of $75,000. If you messed that up, you potentially cost the company $75,000. If you had an injury where someone got stitches, maybe it cost three or four thousand dollars. So, in that context, the $75,000 mistake was viewed as a bigger problem than the $4,000 injury. We don’t want the injury, and we don’t want to lose the production time from that employee, but in my experience, the $75,000 loss was typically what mattered more.

[00:19:24] Josh Santo: Got it. So there’s more to lose in the product not being put together, assembled, and shipped out on time and in full to the customer than there is if someone were to get hurt on the job.

[00:19:39] Bruce Gane: All right.

[00:19:40] Josh Santo: Oh, that’s interesting, because you mentioned that there is a cost to safety incidents. So if you’re not putting safety first, that’s going to eat into your overall margin. But when you have to choose among the three—safety, quality, and productivity—like you’re calling out, productivity seems to get the most attention, the most focus. Like you said, either produce this amount of revenue or your head’s on the chopping block. But if there’s an incident, it’s more like, “Hey, look, we all have to be careful, we all have to be safe at work. Now get back out there—make, build, ship—let’s go, go, go.”

[00:20:18] Bruce Gane: I’ll give you one more really quick, now that I’m listening to you. I have another really good example. A corporation I worked for had so many injuries that they couldn’t get workers’ comp insurance anymore. They were so dangerous to work with that no one would cover them. So they brought me in to fix all the safety programs and eliminate the injuries. And once we accomplished that—once they reached their goal—they got rid of me.

[00:20:54] Josh Santo: Wow. Wow.

[00:20:55] Bruce Gane: They really didn’t want a safety person. They didn’t want to do what I told them. Actually, yeah, I won’t get into the details, but it got really ugly before it got better. It taught me that I need to be more careful about where I work now—somewhere they truly care about their people. They’re not just numbers. It’s not about the money; it’s about taking care of all of the above equally.

[00:21:25] Josh Santo: I’m imagining in that scenario—back to that question around metrics and KPIs—once you hit a certain measurable goal, they probably said, “We’ve reached it, Bruce, thank you. We don’t need you any longer because we’re hitting our goal.” Wow. And typically, that doesn’t play out very well if you don’t have someone there to help drive and sustain the safe working behaviors that were required to accomplish that in the first place.

[00:21:57] Bruce Gane: They actually, they killed the customer and they went out of business.

[00:22:01] Josh Santo: Oh my goodness, wow. That’s such an unfortunate situation—and one that clearly could have been avoided with the right prioritization, attention, efforts, controls, and training in place.

[00:22:12] Bruce Gane: Oh yeah, they hired me because they killed an employee…

[00:22:20] Josh Santo: Wow.

[00:22:22] Bruce Gane: And then, once I resolved everything with OSHA for them, they still didn’t want to do what they were supposed to, and it ended up resulting in the fatality of a customer. It was in the news.

[00:22:30] Josh Santo: Goodness, wow. That’s really terrible. It’s heartbreaking that two people lost their lives—and who knows how many others were affected, not just by that incident, but by all the things that happened leading up to it.

[00:22:52] Bruce Gane: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:53] Josh Santo: That’s gotta—the severity of the risk involved, particularly in your role as a safety manager, as someone responsible for shepherding an organization toward a safe working environment with safe working behaviors and an overall safety culture—that has to be a very heavy responsibility that weighs on you. How do you manage that?

[00:23:18] It is time for an ad break. Now, unlike other shows, our ads aren’t advertisements. Our ads are advice—quick tips and insights from your fellow manufacturing pros in the Shop Floor, Top Floor community. Here’s one now.

Hey, good afternoon. My name is Rick Davis. I’m with Morgan Foods, Chief Manufacturing Officer, and a quick blurb and piece of advice that I might suggest is to always stay connected to your leader.

[00:23:45] We all have mindsets and ideas of culture and what we want the organization to move toward and become, but it’s so critical that you stay connected to that leader—whether it’s the board of directors, the CEO, or a supervisor. We have the responsibility as leaders to deliver the results of the business.

[00:24:03] I believe culture and how you lead have a significant impact on those results. However, you’ll find differing approaches across every single person in a leadership role. So it’s critical, as you progress through your career, to stay connected and understand how you might be able to mold your responses and actions to fit within that guidance.

If you have a coach and everyone on that team plays together in the right direction of that coach, you are going to be successful. I would just encourage you to continue to stay connected, and thank you for your time.

[00:24:35] Bruce Gane: Initially, it was heavy on me because they put me in a position of doing quality, safety, and environmental. I did my best to do what I could, but I had no training. Then OSHA showed up and started pointing out all the things that were not compliant—things I had no idea about, and no one there had any idea about. I struggled through it. It was very stressful.

But after that, the company gave me training. I actually became one of the corporate safety committee members, and I traveled the country auditing all our facilities with the safety committee. I learned so much. After that, my relationship with coworkers improved, our performance and safety improved, and our bonus was tied to our safety performance—so we got more bonus.

I left there with such confidence and went to the next job knowing I could make a difference. And in all the places that I’ve worked, the first one had twelve injuries a year—one a month—and when I left, there were zero. The next one had eleven, and when I left there, it was zero. The next one had twelve, and when I left, there was one injury.

So it helps me to know that I am making a difference. It’s never easy, but it’s worth it.

[00:26:17] Josh Santo: When you think about that experience of starting and being new to the role—not really knowing what you know now—and you think about where you started, the training you received, and the impact you went on to make, what were some of the key concepts that you learned in that transition from inexperienced to trained to successful? What were some of the tools or concepts that helped you accomplish those goals and results you just took us through?

[00:26:57] Bruce Gane: I really think it’s about going into the workplace and having conversations. There are employees you run into where it’s a short conversation because you find out there’s really nothing there—we’re not going to go anywhere. They either don’t want to talk to the safety guy, or they don’t have anything to contribute. But then you’re going to find those people who are a wealth of knowledge and experience. They’ve seen things happen that you don’t see. I’m not the worker in station number five—they are. So they’re going to tell you, “There’s this and this and that,” and some of it’s complaints, and some of it’s legitimate safety issues.

So listen. Talk. Have those conversations. Doing a hazard analysis of every area in the workplace is a requirement, and I’ve been to places that have never done one. As you’re doing that, you’re constantly asking “What if?” and being fresh eyes. Don’t look at things the way everyone else is looking at them. Try to look with fresh eyes—imagine what could happen, what might happen.

It’s amazing. I’ve seen employees change the workplace—their ideas change the way a workstation operates to be more productive, safer, and to improve quality. So talk to these people, have those conversations, and try to get them to share with you what you’re not going to see unless you’re working there.

[00:28:45] Josh Santo: So what you called out is very similar to what we’ve heard from some of the quality leaders we’ve brought onto the show: go to Gemba and talk with the folks who are there doing the job every single day, day in and day out. What are they experiencing? From your perspective, you might put a safety spin on it—what are some risks that you’ve seen pop up? What concerns do you have for your own well-being? What’s affecting you? Are there moments where you find yourself in pain?

Just having those types of honest conversations with those individuals helps you identify what you can do to better serve them and help turn their environment into a safe working environment. That concept seems to pop up over and over again—go there, talk with folks.

That idea you called out, seeing with fresh eyes—what are the things people may be missing that could lead to a potential incident or even be a precursor to a near miss, for example?

[00:29:46] Josh Santo: You know, catching it before it becomes a near miss, before it becomes an incident, before it becomes an injury, before it becomes a fatality. That concept seems to be consistently true no matter what—go to Gemba, observe, talk, see with fresh eyes, and be a resource for folks. Because you mentioned something earlier—you mentioned that people sometimes see safety as the police and not as the partner that you intend. I’m curious, how do you change that perception?

[00:30:22] Bruce Gane: Well, typically, again, those conversations—I look for common ground. There’s almost always some kind of common ground. Some people respect my military background; some people respect that I’m a father of three; some people respect my faith. What is it that we have in common so that we can start a relationship?

[00:30:45] Bruce Gane: Some are just so standoffish and have such a hard time accepting, let’s say, correction or even having a conversation. I pull out the dad jokes I’ve got. All right, I’ll pull out my phone right now—I’ve got over a hundred dad jokes. For a while there, we had two hundred and some employees at one place, and I never knew who I’d told which joke to, so I had a new dad joke every day.

[00:31:14] Bruce Gane: I’d come in, say something, correct somebody, and then as I was leaving, I’d give my dad joke and laugh—and, you know, laughter was the best medicine. Then I’d come back a week later and say, “Hey, I noticed you’re not doing that anymore. You’re doing a great job with this.”

[00:31:29] Bruce Gane: They’d start to walk away and say, “Hey, where’s my dad joke?” You know? So I think really working with people and letting them know that you care—and being genuine—goes a long way, because a lot of people don’t get that anywhere else in their life.

[00:31:48] Josh Santo: So how do you think the dad joke is helping in that scenario? What do you think is happening when you tell it—besides the chuckles?

[00:31:57] Bruce Gane: Well, a little bit of levity goes a long way. There are days in some of these places—twelve-hour days on your feet—and it’s money, money, money, push, push, push. You know, “We want more production, we want this, we want that, we want better quality.” And there’s never a laugh, there’s never any fun.

As a matter of fact, I got in trouble once. I got an email from a VP that said, “I heard you told so-and-so a joke.” I said, “Yes, I did, and I’m willing to stand on that.” There are people who are just wired differently—jokes aren’t funny to them; dad jokes are dumb.

Whether it’s a dad joke or a helping hand after work or during work, I’m basically wired as a servant. I want to be that person for them.

[00:32:54] Josh Santo: Oh my goodness—the fact that somebody went there and said, “Hey, I heard you told a joke.” Talk about setting up a classic villain archetype in a Hallmark movie, right? “We’re here to work, not to laugh. How dare you?” My goodness.

[00:33:15] I think you bring up such a good point—that at the end of the day, we’re all human. We all want to have a good time. Sure, we want to work hard—some of the time, not all the time—but we still want to be appreciated. And I like that—a little bit of levity goes a long way. It seems like it’s a moment of connection, a reminder of, “Hey, look, I have to talk to you about something that relates to the work you’re doing. I know that’s never a fun conversation, but we have to have it. By the way, here’s a little bit of fun, because we can still have fun and be safe at the same time.”

[00:33:36] Now, you recently stepped into a new company where you took on the safety manager role and responsibilities. How did you go about assessing—or in general, how do you go about assessing—an organization’s safety culture? What are you looking for? What are you reviewing?

[00:34:05] Bruce Gane: Well, I looked up all the different companies that I interviewed with before I interviewed with them. And then during the interview, I listened and watched their reactions to the things I was saying. I’m almost trying to get them to tell me that they don’t care about safety. Do they know what their injury rate is? What’s the number? There’s a rate of incidents—and if they don’t know the rate, then at least how many injuries they’ve had this year. Companies that couldn’t answer that—I’m really not interested. If you don’t even know, you don’t care.

[00:34:47] Bruce Gane: You’re hiring a safety professional, and you don’t even know what you’re up against this year. I didn’t ask for the last five years—which is what OSHA asks for. They want to see five years’ worth, and you’d better have it.

And then beyond that, what is it that they’re after? Is it just to fill another position, or is there a reason behind it—a goal in mind that says, “We want to improve our safety”? If they want to do that, I want to be a part of it. But if it’s just to fill a slot because they’ve got a hundred people and now they need a safety professional, or the last person is retiring, I’m not interested.

[00:35:28] Josh Santo: Got it. So if safety is, based on that later description, kind of a check-the-box activity versus a key directional input into how they’re managing and evaluating the success of their business, that’s something you look for prior to even joining an organization. And what is that telling you, ultimately?

[00:35:50] Bruce Gane: So when I come in and work and put whatever efforts I do into improving—it’s usually the safety, environmental, and health aspects, you know, environmental health and safety, EHS, all together—and as I do all that work, I walk away at the end of the day, get in the car, and look in the rearview mirror. Is that a better place? Does it really matter what I’m doing? Are more people going to go home whole, in one piece? Are we going to reach a better place—a better workplace, a better environment—where people can feel safe and know that the company cares about their safety?

[00:36:40] If I can do that and know that I’m making a difference, I want to be involved. But I’ve been at places where it’s not important and they don’t care. It’s very frustrating to see, because that reflects on me now—that’s my job. Even though I don’t have control over what upper management says or does, I still feel responsible.

[00:37:10] Josh Santo: Got it. So you’re looking for whether or not you’re going to get the support you need in order to make the impact that you’re there to make. And if they’re not looking at these things, you’re not going to be successful—which means others aren’t going to be successful. Okay, understood.

Well, let’s think about something along the lines of general industry. Based on your experience within safety, I’m curious—what have you seen many manufacturing professionals get wrong about safety in manufacturing?

[00:37:43] Bruce Gane: All right, well—what safety and manufacturing get wrong. I guess the biggest thing is thinking that we’re going to look at OSHA compliance requirements, talk about them, train on them, and all our problems are going to go away. That’s not the case.

The places where I’ve seen the most improvement and the least amount of injuries in general industry petition the employees for their ideas. Quite frankly, some of their ideas come across as complaints, but their ideas for improvements in production, quality, and safety—listen to those and reward those. It’s amazing what you can do, rather than having a supervisor who says, “I’m in charge, I’m over all these people, I know best.” If you just look at compliance, you’re missing out.

[00:38:44] Josh Santo:  Interesting—because on one side of the coin, it makes sense to ask yourself, what are the industry requirements that we must adhere to? Okay, that then defines how we handle safety. On one side of the coin, that makes sense. But on the other side of the coin, it sounds like there are maybe some nuances or particulars that would get overlooked and ultimately wouldn’t help you accomplish the goal if you were to over-index purely on OSHA’s compliance requirements.

[00:39:20] Interesting. It’s the second time you’ve mentioned the importance of going and speaking to employees, getting their ideas, and how some of it is going to sound like complaints—but some of it’s going to be actionable. How do you filter out what’s a complaint versus what’s something that you can help with?

[00:39:38] Bruce Gane: You respond to it all. You respond to it all.

So an employee commented—or left an issue in the box; there was an actual drop box so it could be anonymous—and the note said the bathroom stunk. I’m like, are you kidding me? Of all these different things, the bathroom stinks? But it goes on the spreadsheet. There’s one big bathroom—one for men, one for women. I go to it, and sure enough, it’s out-of-this-world bad. I thought, something’s really wrong.

I go into the women’s bathroom—it’s the same thing. Come to find out, the ventilation system had failed. It was a belt-driven fan system, and the belt had snapped. There were three rooms in that structure: the men’s room, the women’s room, and the O₂ cleaning room. The O₂ cleaning room is where one of our employees puts stainless steel and brass items through a hot water bath with Blue Gold. We clean everything to oxygen-clean specifications.

Well, when it’s done, you can’t just lay it out to dry—you have to use high-pressure nitrogen to dry off all the parts. The doors are closed, but the ventilation fan’s on, right? No—it’s not. They would’ve been asphyxiated and died.

So you look into it all. You go to the complaints, you go to the suggestions—you follow up on everything.

[00:41:26] Josh Santo: Wow. What an important reminder—because, to your point, it sounds a little ridiculous to start with. Like, come on, aren’t there more important things to take care of? More serious ideas or pieces of feedback to act on? But you followed that thread because you were committed—if you hear it, you’re going to look into it. And you found a potentially fatal situation in that case, just by following up on that report. Wow.

[00:41:57] Bruce Gane: Yep. Yeah, there’s more of them. I’ve had that happen more than once.

[00:42:04] Josh Santo: Wow. Well, I would love to explore all of these, because I bet we could fill eight, nine, ten hours’ worth of lessons like this. But I think I’ll try to condense it into this next question.

When you think about everything you’ve seen and the lessons you’ve learned, I’m curious—what is one thing affecting safety in manufacturing today that you would advocate for changing and prioritizing?

[00:42:37] Bruce Gane: Hmm. So one thing that I would advocate for changing and prioritizing—I think that, knowing that typically we run into the “money first and safety third” mindset, what I like about where I work now is the safety triangle. I think a lot of people miss out on this concept and don’t think about their day-to-day job as being a balance between safety, quality, and productivity.

Productivity means getting it done—making the money. Quality means meeting specifications on everything that’s accomplished and manufactured. And safety means doing it without hurting yourself or anyone else.

[00:43:31] When you get down to it, you can look at them as equally important—almost like a three-legged table. If you lose any one of those legs, something’s going to fall off the table. You’re trying to keep everything on the table. I think having that balance is something that many in manufacturing don’t look at. There’s often too much focus on productivity and quality, and then, “Yeah, you know, try and be safe.” And that’s not a good balance.

[00:44:07] Josh Santo: Hmm. Yeah, it’s not a balance at all, right? So, keeping in mind that the more you pursue one of these three elements of the triangle—productivity being the one that people typically pursue or businesses are throwing money at to improve—the question becomes: at what cost? You make gains in productivity, but what are you sacrificing in terms of quality or even safety?

From the perspective you’re coming from, it’s not acceptable to make sacrifices in safety—that has to be immutable. The same thing with quality—you can’t sacrifice quality, or else you’re not going to have customers, and there’d be no point in making improvements in productivity. So now you’ve got another immutable element.

It sounds like, to some degree, productivity is really the only one that has flexibility—not the number one thing in that regard.

[00:45:11] Bruce Gane: Yeah.

[00:45:11] Josh Santo: What a conundrum.

[00:45:13] Bruce Gane: Hmm.

[00:45:14] Josh Santo: Well, great. Bruce, I really appreciate the conversation today. I feel like I’ve learned a lot, and I appreciate your willingness to share—even some of the tough situations you’ve encountered. It’s a very humbling reminder of what folks are facing day in and day out, and of the importance of roles like yours, which are there to make sure that everyone comes home in one piece, every single time, every single day.

[00:45:42] Bruce Gane: Yep. So important.

[00:45:45] Josh Santo: All right. Well thanks for stopping by Bruce.

[00:45:47] Bruce Gane: Alright, thanks it. Good talking to you.