Happy New Year, you beautiful punks!

It's not a NOFX song, but the title is from Separation of Church and Skate, so that counts.

Shocking, but his one is a full “figure it out live” episode. No prep. No agenda. Just the boys looking forward to some time off, talking shit, and accidentally landing on a pretty okay idea.

There's a lot of the usual BS, but it's important to know that Dave rides an e-bike. Somewhere in the middle of the 8 minutes of dumb conversation that happens in most episodes, things turn serious (but not too serious) as Ron, Ben, and Dave start asking whether we’ve made work so “safe” that people are actually worse at dealing with real risk.

There's talk about pocket knives for kids, live electrical work, hand-flying airplanes, clean construction sites that still hurt people, and why removing every hazard might also remove competence. There’s aviation, chemical plants, forklifts, chaos engineering, tabletop exercises, and the kinda weird realization that if people never see danger, they might not recognize it when it shows up.

No clean answers or silver bullets. Just a messy, honest conversation about risk, skill, exposure, and the case for sometimes having a little less safety.

DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.

Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.

https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/

Let us know what you think at [email protected] or on our LinkedIn page.

Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com

My heart is yearning (yep, it’s a NOFX song) in anticipation.

Of what?

Well, that’s what the episode is, you jerk. Don’t ruin the surprise.

Coming on the heels of the tragic shooting in Sydney, Australia, the boys couldn’t help but notice the commentary about how someone, somewhere, should have anticipated it.

What does that have to do with Punk Rock Safety?

Well, anticipation is one of what Erik Hollnagel calls the four potentials of resilient systems. Sounds great, but what - and how - are we supposed to anticipate? It doesn’t seem possible to predict every possible failure or event, right? But what about conditions in the system?

Instead of trying to 'Magic 8 Ball' everything, Ron, Dave, and Ben suggest that what organizations should anticipate is where systems, processes, or people may be stretched, stressed, or pushed to their limits. Like in the circle pit. Or pretty much any time you’re forced to listen to the Misfits for very long. Or ska.

Basically, we should focus on anticipating where there is less capacity to adapt and maneuver. Recognizing these vulnerable spots, organizations can then build their capacity to adapt, respond, and recover, even if it isn’t a specific scenario.

So, expecting a single, complex convergence into an unpredictable event is tough. Planning for degraded conditions in parts of the system without a lot of backup? That’s the kind of anticipation that counts (somebody let the sound guys at Punk in the Park know, would ya?).

DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.

Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.

https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/

Let us know what you think at [email protected] or on our LinkedIn page.

Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com

After the usual BS of “Did anyone invite a guest?” and “Let’s text random people while we're recording,” the boys get down to business: a whole lot of safety plans are the same recycled Word doc with a new company logo slapped on. Sounds almost the same as every ska song does. Turns out, not a lot of people spend time creating real, specific plans, so they just do a “File, Save As” on their way to compliance.

By the way, it's still a NOFX song for the episode title. Just saying.

Contractor management? Copy-paste, MFers. Workers think half these plans are useless, and even the managers know they’re just hoops to jump through. But don’t worry, checklists and forms will sort it out, because nothing says safety like paperwork!

Leadership? Yeah, leaders are supposed to show up and make all this “personal,” except half the time it's just performative nonsense. They debate whether “best practices” exist, eventually agreeing that the best practice is probably making sure people know what the hell a safety plan is even for.

The reason every unique, special snowflake job site's plans look exactly like the next is because, deep down, they're lazy (says Dave), too overwhelmed, or just too unbothered to actually change anything about work.  

Brian Hughes from Sologic was cool enough to answer a last-minute call and hop onto the pod, and because he's a bassist, he's nicer than most people. He takes a better view of how something like a template can actually help, not hurt, especially when people are overwhelmed by other stuff. Like meat at the Brazilian steakhouse where Brian is housing steaks off a meat sword. He looks at a template or copy-paste as a life preserver, but he draws the line at stopping there.

And then Brian has to go get dessert.

So, maybe it's okay to have a little bit of help, but a wash, rinse, repeat of stuff that sounds the same but doesn't work isn't good. Cool. Now what? Questions, not "insert company name." As a starter kit, you can still get a jump start without just putting 27 people on stage with horns and calling it good. Check it out for all the answers.

DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.

Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.

https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/

Let us know what you think at [email protected] or on our LinkedIn page.

Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com

This episode dives into the reality of safety management systems; how they often feel disconnected, bloated, and stuck in the past. You know. Like a dinosaur.

Maybe worse than being a dinosaur is being a dinosaur just for the sake of having something to show off, even when it's just to call something a "system" or to have something to point at.

The boys chase down the idea that safety activities like inductions, audits, and incident investigations rarely talk to each other, leading to a lack of real coordination and feedback loops. They explore how organizations sometimes pile on useless tasks and “bullshit” safety activities, missing the mark on what actually matters.  

Probably the best part - if there is one - of the conversation touches on the importance of knowledge management, the role of AI in surfacing hidden insights, and the need for systems to be dynamic, not just static documents. There’s also a healthy dose of skepticism about the value of safety professionals and a call to focus on what truly keeps people safe, rather than chasing every minor incident.  

In a weird twist (not as weird as Dave's pods from Episode 43), the episode wraps up with some mushroom coffee stories, and a reminder that sometimes, the best safety move is knowing when to let go of the small stuff.

DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.

Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.

https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/

Let us know what you think at [email protected] or on our LinkedIn page.

Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com

If you've never read all the way to the bottom of the episode notes, you won't know what PRSL is. Now you do. It's a good name for an episode, but seriously, go check out www.punkrocksaveslives.org. They're solid folks doing really kickass work. Not like this podcast.

In this episode, the boys start off debating the merits of bacon and egg rolls. Or egg and bacon rolls, because priorities.

Pretty quickly, things go headfirst into the world of “wellbeing,” getting glued onto safety job titles. We’re talking about how psychosocial risk has (sometimes) become the new buzzword, and whether that’s actually making work better or just giving us more posters and press releases.

We dig into whether safety is the right place for wellbeing, or if it’s just being dumped there because no one else knows where to put it. The real deal? Wellbeing only matters if we fix the work itself. Stop with the mindfulness sessions between 13 meetings and start giving people real control over their jobs. The wellbeing that really works: redesigning the work, not the posters.

If “wellness” just means more compliance for the sake of it, we’ll get the same result we got with a lot of efforts around culture - a brand campaign with no change to the conditions of work.

And yeah, Ron’s sleep pods might’ve been reasonable, but Dave’s story about an actual Australian office having a “masturbation station” took a turn no one expected. Ben reminds us, if your safety work can’t tie to actual wellbeing, maybe it’s just busy work. But when you fix the work, people get better by default. Or because of the pods.

Bottom line: Wellbeing is more than fruit bowls and yoga mats, and if we don’t change the work, we’re just putting lipstick on the same old compliance pig.

DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.

Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.

https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/

Let us know what you think at [email protected] or on our LinkedIn page.

Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com

First things first, fun without Dave already happened. Ron and Ben saw The Casualties, Adolescents, Adicts, and Dwarves. All of those bands have been around for a long time - like 30-40 years - and that definitely doesn't make us old.

It's another Bad Religion episode title. They put on a badass show at Punk in the Park, and they're old like us, too.

This episode is sort of a nod to Fletcher. Yep, he broke your guitar. No, he wasn't trying to be a real asshole. Fat Mike knows that's part of punk. Sometimes you have to go to the hospital to live what you say you believe. The circle pit is a fundamental part of a punk show, but you might lose a tooth while you're in there. When you fall down, though, the pit is a family. Everyone has your back, man.

Sometimes people are dicks (yeah, us too, even if we try hard not to be), but it seems to be a weakness in safety that there's not a lot of room for defending our process of belief. We've talked about dogma in safety before, but this is different. This is a conversation about how we deliver and receive dissent. 

Contemporary safety has grown a lot in terms of talking about empathy and understanding context, and that bails on it completely at the first sign of skepticism. Let's talk about the fundamental attribution error as something we need to be aware of and minimize, and then just assume the worst of people at work or in life. Is it just us?

Stealing (and paraphrasing) from Carsten Busch a little bit, shouldn't the "New View" be asking why things made sense to Heinrich - or others - instead of judging it based on the standards of today?

It's not a consequence-free world, though. Swapping skepticism for assholery might mean living with the knock-on effects of a decision. But starting with the assumption that everyone wants a safe company, we're just sorting out the details.

That means that learning about rules, biases, and beliefs isn't just learning about others - we have to apply the same standards to ourselves. Context, intent, care, and system design aren't just things that shape others; we own them too.

Way back in Episode 1, we promised to try and avoid corruption between process and intent. It's sometimes uncomfortable to have to explain our beliefs, but that's a feature, not a bug.

"Don't hear what I didn't say" might be a good way to start.

DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.

Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.

https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/

Let us know what you think at [email protected] or on our LinkedIn page.

Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com

It's a deep cut, but it's another NOFX song title for the episode.

Probably don't go to work wasted, but if you do, make sure you talk about it in the pre-job brief.  

Pre-job, or pre-task, or pre-work briefs - or whatever you want to call them - are sort of a contentious topic these days. On one hand, they're often connected to JSA/JHA paperwork, and that's not always helpful. There are exceptions, but there are a whole pile of bad ones out there. Shit like, "It's cold out there, folks, so make sure you watch your footing."  

Cool. That helps.

A real pre-job brief isn't about paperwork, though. It's about alignment of understanding and expectations (or a shared mental model if that makes you happy). Think of it like using small words and speaking slowly to make sure the bass player knows what's going on.  

Good pre-job conversations help identify a lot more issues and deviations from normal work than filling out paper for the purpose of satisfying a (sometimes imaginary) rule. Bad ones are a way to exercise control. And reinforce that people can't take care of themselves.  

Ron's got a pretty easy on-ramp to talk about joint activity for this one, so make sure to pay attention to that part. As much shit as we give him about it, he does know a thing or two about coordination of work across boundaries, like what you see between contractors and subs, or even between trades or specialties.

We can't give people a process and no capability, as Dave says, and that's what overstructuring a pre-job brief through form or process can do. So how can we facilitate good pre-work discussions? Maybe think about some not-lazy perspective where the purpose isn't the paper, it's to plan the work, identify challenges to it, and build in a bit of buffer between the shit that might kill us.

DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.

Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.

https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/

Let us know what you think at [email protected] or on our LinkedIn page.

Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com

Another listener question. How good, right?  

The question? "I am still learning how to apply HOP principles. Can you talk about how they can be used to help us see and respond to risks that never show up in incident data?"

It's sort of a version of asking how we know what's happening when nothing is happening, and how the five principles of HOP, if you're into that sort of thing, support that. What five principles, you ask? The ones from Todd Conklin are: 1) Error is normal; 2) Blame fixes nothing; 3) Context drives behavior; 4) Learning and improving are vital; 5) Leadership response matters.

Ron starts by answering the question he wishes we were asked, and inadvertently points to some really cool info from the ICAO Human Performance Manual, Document 10151. It's not part of the actual answer, but you should still check it out.

Back to the matter at hand, trying to find problems isn't the same as trying to apply principles. Incident data can’t tell you everything, but maybe leaning on the intent of the HOP principles can help uncover weak signals hiding in plain sight. No principles will do the work for us, though, and it’s not about finding broken procedures, either. It’s about finding brittle systems, understanding everyday trade-offs, and asking way better questions.

Dave's recipe for success? Give up the 80% of "face-to-screen" time a lot of safety folks waste and get face-to-work (or face-to-face, or whatever else you want to put your face on). There's more to it, but the boys suggest we all stop looking through the rearview mirror and start paying attention to what’s just up ahead. Also: yes, there’s a glory hole analogy, and no, we’re not sorry.

The only thing that makes this episode better? A quote from a superfan posted a little while ago on LinkedIn. Fully out of context and in all its glory: "...never mind the quality, feel the width!" 
 

Want to learn more? Listen to the episode!

DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.

Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.

https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/

Let us know what you think at [email protected] or on our LinkedIn page.

Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com

We're finally back to a NOFX song title, so things are looking up. A lot of the time, when we decide someone did something dumb, we say things like "dude, how'd you fuck that up, it should just be common sense." It's a good way to distance ourselves, blame someone, and be fucking lazy all at the same time. But what is "common sense" anyway?

Sometimes it seems like what we're trying to do is take credit for good luck and call it common sense. Taking credit for something you didn't create sounds like some big record label behavior, doesn't it? And maybe that's it. Maybe common sense is just a label used to feel powerful.

The boys kick around a few ideas, trying to decide whether common sense is something innate, taught, or based on experience - or all three. That sort of opens the door to wondering about where expertise comes from. If common sense is just a catalog of knowledge, you'd never cover it all, so maybe the intention is about knowing how to think or reason through uncertainty. Like when the Ceschi from the Codefendants' amp quit working at Punk in Drublic. They still put on one of their best shows by figuring it out as they went along. That kind of response seems to be what we mean a lot of times.

After the normal rambling discussion, the conversation takes a surprising turn toward relevance, with some ideas about acceleration of expertise and some of the generational gaps that seem to make discussions about common sense a little more rowdy.

You should probably just listen to the episode and see if you can figure out the answer. Why? It's common sense, dumbass.

DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.

Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.

https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/

Let us know what you think at [email protected] or on our LinkedIn page.

Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com

Fine, Simple Plan is only sort of punk. Or punk adjacent. They're about as pop punk as pop punk gets. But it makes for a decent episode name.

Why, because safety strategy gets oversimplified a lot. Or really, the idea of it gets oversimplified.

Most safety strategy is a lot of BS anyway that ends up not being strategic at all.

The boys talk about whether or not a safety strategy is even useful. Ron says yes, which is a little surprising given his stance in Episode 2 that safety people aren't really that necessary. Ben and Dave (and probably Ron, too) instead argue that what we call strategy is mostly just a PowerPoint-flavored attempt at looking busy and useful.  

Safety isn't the business. It's a support function (a really important one, but it's still support, not the product) like accounting and HR. Those folks are rocking out 3-year strategy plans with big ideas about how Accounts Payable will be reinventing finance.

The organization has a strategic view - a big one - that other departments and divisions are meant to support.  

So maybe the best safety strategy is how we draw connections to support the broader strategy. You value innovation? Cool. We'd better get confident in how we understand risk and build systems that allow us to experiment without things turning into chaos. What'd you say about profitability? If we're working hard to understand work and get rid of dumb stuff, we're increasing efficiency.

Aside from those discussions, a whole lot of safety is tactical, right? That's where adaptability lives, and that's usually a part of what we want. Drawing out a three-year plan doesn't really scream adaptability - at least in the way it's often done.

The principles we're trying to achieve in safety don't really change, do they? It's the day-to-day management of risk and adaptation that does, and that means it isn't strategy. So, instead of creating problems to solve and putting them on a slide deck, maybe it's better to identify the top one or two things that really need our attention and go solve for those.

That's how experts work - not that the boys are experts - but it's a good indicator that your teams aren't checking in on the mission and vision posters as they make safety decisions.

Cool. Carry on, punks.

DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.

Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.

https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/

Let us know what you think at [email protected] or on our LinkedIn page.

Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com