Jacqueline Handy took a marketing job at a construction safety firm in New York City and had no idea what site safety was. Then she sat through her first board meeting, watched a room of tradesmen in Timbs and jeans start talking about projects and plans and mechanisms in words she'd never heard, and decided that was where she wanted to be.That was the front door. Almost nobody walks through the one you'd expect.She's now Manager of Environment, Health & Safety at Haugland Group, with an MBA, a master's in occupational safety and health, a stack of credentials, and a PhD in progress. In this conversation she walks through the path — the MTA subway system, the years of night classes, the certification that actually moved her career — and gets specific about the craft. Why her training room walls are covered in photographs of her own company's job sites. Why she'd rather let a tradesperson teach her their job than pull rank. What happened when she walked down to a flagger the crew had given up on and just let him talk.And the part she keeps coming back to: she speaks at career days where people tell her they had no idea safety was a career at all.Links: LinkedIn:   / jacquelinehandymba  Haugland Group: https://hauglandgroup.us/ASSP Hudson River Valley Chapter: https://hudsonrivervalley.assp.org/NAWIC: https://www.nawic.orgNontraditional Employment for Women: https://www.new-nyc.org/All episodes: https://bissafety.ca/safety-spotlight...Want to be a guest? Apply through the link above.

Bill Hart is a fifth-generation miner from West Virginia. He watched his grandfather die of black lung when he was sixteen, and later watched the same disease take his father. He now starts work at a gold mine in South Carolina alongside his son, the sixth generation in the family to go underground.In this episode, Bill makes a case that most safety programs get backwards: safety isn't a priority, it's a value. Priorities shift with the quarter. Values don't. He walks through what that means in practice, from the cultural curve that runs from safe-by-luck to safe-by-design, to the "death letter" exercise he used after a lock-out tag-out violation, to why he thinks a near miss should really be called a near hit.Connect with Bill HartLinkedIn:   / bill-hart-aa00a012  Mentioned in this episodeAllan James Moore on The Safety Spotlight:    • Party Crashing the Safety Status Quo | Saf...  Chapters00:00 Welcome and introductions01:56 Growing up in the Appalachian Mountains04:34 "I didn't find mining, mining found me"05:29 Watching black lung take his grandfather and father07:52 Why people come before production08:03 Tribal knowledge and earning a crew's trust12:37 Relaxed purposefulness, and the authority to shut a job down15:05 Safety is a value, not a priority16:28 The one habit that makes safety communication work17:06 Asking one question, then listening20:41 The Bradley curve: from safe by luck to safe by design23:02 First moves when a site is running on luck25:18 Non-complacent eyes: what new miners see that veterans miss27:36 Visible felt leadership in practice29:56 The death letter33:28 From the rehab room to prevention36:14 Near miss or near hit?37:22 Work as intended, work as normal, work as done40:41 Drones, AI cameras, and the "gotcha" problem46:34 Mentors50:48 One piece of advice for his younger self52:49 Where to find Bill

A broken door handle nobody fixed will tell you more about your safety culture than your incident numbers will.Michael Bassey has spent two decades in process safety across Nigeria, Qatar, the UAE, Argentina and North America, leading high-risk, high-consequence investigations. In 2010 he ran one that was thorough, detailed, and well received by leadership. Eight months later the same facility tripped again. Different shift, different people, same outcome. That gap is what he has been chasing ever since, and it is what led him to write Beyond Blame.In this conversation he unpacks why "human error" as a root cause stops the learning, why culture is "the soil that helps behaviors to germinate," how trust erodes over things as small as an unfixed door handle or a meeting you start fifteen minutes late, and what changed for him when a mentor sent him around every facility in the business unit for two months before he started the job.Michael Bassey, D.Eng, CSP, is an asset process safety advisor at Chevron in Houston and the author of Beyond Blame: A Human and Organizational Performance Approach to Incident Investigation, Learning, and Leadership.CHAPTERS0:00 "Trust is key and trust is fragile"0:25 Welcome to The Safety Spotlight1:34 From physics teacher to process safety at Chevron4:54 Leading across cultures: "people are people everywhere"8:53 The mindset you carry into a new country9:55 Beyond Blame: the incident that happened twice14:21 Why blame is a dead end15:36 Culture is the soil behavior grows in15:59 The broken door handle problem19:11 Why small unkept promises show up on the front line22:01 Operational discipline is for leaders too25:40 Closing the gap between the office and the field26:53 From "I Care" observations to real coaching30:44 The procedure step nobody follows32:05 What mentorship actually is34:09 The mentor who sent him around every facility37:43 Finding a mentor and building real competency39:29 Advice to his younger self42:40 Where to find Michael and Beyond BlameCONNECT WITH MICHAELLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmichaelbassey/Michael's book on Amazon:Beyond Blame: A Human and Organizational Performance Approach to Incident Investigation, Learning, and Leadershiphttps://www.amazon.ca/Beyond-Blame-Organizational-Performance-Investigation/dp/B0GRBVQWYHABOUT THE SAFETY SPOTLIGHTLong-form conversations with the people doing the work in workplace safety. New episodes regularly. Subscribe so you don't miss one.The Safety Spotlight is produced by BIS Safety Software.

Ask a room full of employees whose job safety is, and plenty of hands will point at the safety department. Brian Fielkow got that answer when he bought his own trucking company, and he calls it the wrong one. 

Brian did not arrive in safety the usual way. He started out practising business law in Milwaukee, where meeting clients across a range of industries taught him to look for patterns. He went to work for his favourite client, a three generation recycling company, helped grow it, and sold it to Waste Management. After leaving Waste he bought his own trucking company and built it into a trucking, freight brokerage, and logistics business, and it was there that the role of safety came into focus for him, not as a compliance exercise but as the business itself. He has since written three books on the subject, most recently Making Safety Happen. 

In this episode of The Safety Spotlight, Brian makes the case that there is no safety culture sitting separate from company culture, and that the safest companies have an advantage precisely because they are not spending their time cleaning up messes. Safe outcomes, in his view, are a reflection of leadership quality. He is careful to add that the best run company can still have a bad day, and that every organization he has led or advised is a work in process. 

Ask most organizations how safety is going and they will hand you their incident numbers. Cody Woolf would rather know what happens on site when the senior leaders aren’t there.

Cody didn’t come to safety the usual way either. He went to school for law enforcement and criminal justice, then spent his early career in commercial vehicle enforcement with the Alberta government, pulling vehicles over on the highway and learning to have difficult conversations quickly. A friend moved into the safety world in 2008 and made it sound interesting enough that when a company offered to train him, he took the job with a plan to return to policing if it didn’t work out. Seventeen years later he has worked across civil and commercial construction, industrial, and now oil and gas and petrochemical, and he still says he has learned more from the workers in the field than from any course he has taken or book he has read.

In this episode of The Safety Spotlight, Cody makes the case that a clean record and a strong culture are two different things. He carries a line from his current mentor, that the absence of an incident doesn’t mean the presence of safety, and he is blunt about the alternative explanation: sometimes an organization is getting lucky. What closes that gap, in his view, is presence. Leaders in the field, conversations instead of emails, and follow-up that workers can actually see.

What can safety leaders in construction, oil and gas, and manufacturing learn from a workplace where you can't pause an emergency to fill out a hazard assessment?In this episode of Safety Spotlight, we sit down with Nicole Wetsch, Manager of Occupational Health and Safety for the Edmonton Police Service. Nicole started her career in medical microbiology and nanotechnology research before moving into policing, and she brings a scientist's discipline to one of the least prescriptive safety environments there is. She calls her team "safety unicorns," OHS professionals in a world with no ISO standard for the work in front of them.We talk about what it takes to protect people who are wired to look out for others before themselves, why functional beats thorough when a patrol officer's hazard assessment could run 200 pages, and how putting people ahead of paperwork built the credibility that shifted the culture.Topics include:Why traditional hazard assessments don't fit emergent work, and what replaces themHow EPS applied research-lab control banding to its early fentanyl and naloxone responseDesigning PPE that fits, and why building for women tends to benefit the whole teamForward-rotating shifts, sleep hygiene, and the long-term health cost of shift workMoving incident reporting from blame to root cause, and getting stronger corrective actions as a resultMaking the data-backed business case that earns leadership buy-in and resources

Ask most leaders if they have a good team and they'll say yes. Ken Larson's answer is that they have no idea what a real team is.In this episode of The Safety Spotlight, executive coach Ken Larson explains why most "teams" are really just a roster of talented people working near each other, not with each other. We get into interdependence, the misfire vs. the mishire, why you get what you tolerate, and why a leader's behavior matters more than any core value carved in bronze on the lobby wall.

What happens when a safety professional stops writing policies and starts walking the floor instead?  

In this episode of the Safety Spotlight Podcast, we sit down with Erin Heimbecker, Workplace Safety Specialist at the Saskatchewan Association for Safe Workplaces in Health (SASWH), to explore what it actually takes to build a safety culture that people believe in, not just comply with. 

Erin's path is one built on hands-on experience. Starting out in construction and manufacturing before crossing into healthcare, she has worked across provinces, adapted to different regulations, and learned firsthand that what works on one site will never work on every site. One principle has carried through every role: you cannot earn respect without giving it first. 

This conversation breaks down:  

• Why PPE compliance fails when you skip the conversation and start with the policy 

• How walking the floor changes everything about how workers receive safety guidance 

• Why safety professionals will never know it all, and why that is their greatest strength 

• How to build a professional network that actually shows up when you need it 

• Why culture change has to start at the top, or it does not start at all 

• How to communicate safety to managers in the language that makes sense to them 

• What it means to have tough skin and still be the person workers want to call 

Erin explains why safety professionals who stay in the office lose the trust of the people they are trying to protect. Real culture is built by being present, asking questions, and understanding that a procedure written without seeing the work is just paper. 

You will also hear how Erin approaches the harder, quieter parts of this work, the calls that come in after an incident, the workers who are afraid to report, and the difference between reacting with frustration and responding with empathy. 

If you are early in your safety career, managing a team that has stopped listening, or simply looking for a reminder of why this work matters, this episode delivers. 

What does it take to keep millions of kilometers of road safe when 80% of everything we use every day depends on the people behind the wheel? 

In this episode of the Safety Spotlight Podcast, we sit down with Mario Da Silva, Fleet Safety and Risk Management Leader at Manitoulin Transport, to explore what it really means to build a lasting safety culture inside one of Canada's most complex transportation operations. 

Mario's path is anything but straight. Starting in 1995 with a background in computer programming and loss prevention, and expecting to stay only a couple of years, he has spent over 30 years in transportation, growing from the ground up into one of the industry's most experienced voices in fleet safety and risk management. 

This conversation breaks down: 

• Why technology in modern trucks has become a game-changer for safety, and what carriers risk if they have that data but don't act on it 

• How telematics, outward-facing cameras, and electronic logging devices are reshaping driver accountability 

• Why incident data is like a black box in a plane and what companies must do to protect it 

• The shared responsibility between professional drivers and the everyday motorist on public roads 

• How to build a safety culture that starts at the top and spreads through genuine respect and consistency 

• Why mentorship and coaching compatibility matter just as much as technical driver skill 

• What the next generation of safety leaders needs to hear before they take the wheel 

Mario explains why the biggest safety challenge in transportation right now isn't the technology itself. It's making sure organizations understand what they have, train their people to use it properly, and don't leave that data sitting idle when it could be driving real decisions. Carriers that harness telematics and act on what it tells them are the ones that will lead on both safety and their bottom line. 

You will also hear why the relationship between a new driver and a seasoned mentor can make or break retention, and why choosing the right person to pass knowledge down to is as important as the knowledge itself. Mario shares candidly about the two mentors who shaped his career, and what he hopes to pass on before he steps back. 

If you work in fleet safety, transportation operations, or are simply trying to understand how professional safety culture gets built and sustained over decades, this episode delivers. 

What does it really take to transform workplace safety from a compliance requirement into a deeply embedded culture?

In this episode of the Safety Spotlight Podcast, we sit down with Tom Fitzgerald, founder of Safety Fitz LLC and a former foundry supervisor with over 50 years of experience in operations, HR, and safety leadership. Tom brings a rare perspective, having worked directly on the production floor before moving into safety and consulting.

Tom shares how he helped reduce a plant's total incident rate from nearly 20 to zero by shifting responsibility from one safety manager to an entire workforce.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why safety cannot be owned by one person and must be driven by culture
• The role of leadership, accountability, and peer influence in preventing injuries
• How lean manufacturing principles can transform safety performance
• Real-world strategies for building engaged, high-performing safety teams
• The importance of observation, communication, and leading by example

Tom also shared powerful lessons from his early career, mentorship experiences, and consulting work, offering practical insights for safety professionals at every stage.

Whether you're managing safety programs or working on the front line, this conversation will challenge how you think about responsibility, culture, and what it really means to achieve zero injuries.