Investing in safety training

MCS Influencer Randy Chaffee says the biggest key is to have a safety program in place.

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with MCS Influencer Randy Chaffee. You can read the interview below, listen to the podcast or watch the recording.

Intro: Hello. I'm Alex Tolle with MetalCoffeeShop.com, and I'm back again with Randy Chaffee. How are you, Randy?

Randy Chaffee: I'm well. Alex, how are you?

Alex Tolle: I'm so good. Always so happy to be here with you for the metal influencer topics.

Randy Chaffee: It's great to be here. Great subjects, so whatever we got, let's do it.

Alex Tolle: Yeah, and this month is a super important topic. What are the most effective ways to improve safety in metal construction projects?

Randy Chaffee: Yeah. It is a great question, because out of everything we do ... I'm on the supplier side of things, but everything we do should be geared towards safety as number one. Right? Let's face it. Nobody wants their people hurt, and not even from the ethical legality standpoint. You just don't want your people hurt.

And so it's really important, and I think probably the biggest key is to have a program in place. You can't wing it. You can't wing that stuff anymore. Especially, if you want to go back to the legal side of things a little bit, if you have an incident and you don't have a documented proof that you have a training program and you have a manual and you have things in place, yeah, you're going to get hung out to dry pretty fast. You better have that.

Plus, if you have that and you're teaching your people and making it a part of the culture, because like anything in the workplace, I think everything comes back to culture. What culture do you develop? I think we need to develop, whether it's on the supplier end and manufacturing, the shipping and logistics end or out on the job site, safety just needs to be part of that building culture. I think that all starts with having a program in place, and there's so many opportunities.

If you're not big enough to have people that do that on a regular basis, you still need to assign a safety officer or whatever you want to call them. But there's a lot of opportunities, a lot of tools out there through the different trade associations. You don't have to do all this on your own. I'm involved, as you know, on the board for the National Frame Builders Association. We have all kinds of stuff with safety. We have committees that work with you. We have programs, I mean, you could literally plug in place just about or at least get the basics.

I know I'm not on the board, but I'm a member of MRCA and they have all kinds of training programs and so forth, so they're available. So the fact that you, "Oh. I just don't know what to do. I don't know where to start," that's a very slim excuse, in my opinion, today. You do have a place to start. Just reach out to your trades, your associations and ask, but don't avoid it. That's the biggest thing, is it's easy and we've all been there with stuff. "Well, yeah, but we're safe and nothing ... We've never had an issue and it won't happen to us." I think every person that carried somebody hurt in an ambulance, rode with them or took them in their pickup into a hospital after a bad accident probably said three weeks before that, "Well, that really never happens to us." Right? Until it does.

Alex Tolle: Yeah. Exactly.

Randy Chaffee: So I think it's just really important to make it a culture and to put that in place, monitor it. We have so many meetings in our worlds. Right? I work remote most of the time, but I have 10 Teams meetings or Zoom meetings or Google Meets or something a week with different manufacturers. We don't talk about safety, because I'm a rep. Right?

ut it's you have so many things in the culture that you're building. We may be talking about the sales process, or inventory controls or tariffs or any of the things that we're talking about, but it's all building the culture of what we do. I think safety just has to be part of that, and if we do that, we're going to avoid a lot of issues, hopefully keep people safe. God forbid something happens, at least you've got something to go back to and say, "It happened. It's awful. But we did try to follow the procedure, and we had a procedure to follow."

Alex Tolle: Yeah, and I love that about reaching out to your associations. Western States comes to mind, and they have an entire app, all with safety. There's manuals in there. There's so much information in there, and you can use that every single day. You can implement that into your business. There's no reason not to use those resources. They're right there. You're already part of the association, and if you're not, you can join and get those resources. Because I think, I mean, most every association has some sort of safety information available for you.

Randy Chaffee: Well, I would say that's accurate. I think, because it's such a big part of it, I think every association would and not that there's not a million other reasons to belong to your trade association, whatever that may be. Because there's tons of reasons. I'm a big supporter of that, as you know. But if you're not, maybe that's the starting point. Right?

That itself will pay for being a member. Just getting that safety, programs put together. So highly recommend it. Well, I mean, you can't go without your [inaudible 00:04:18].

Alex Tolle: Totally agree. Well, thank you, Randy. Appreciate your insights, as always, on this very, very important topic.

Randy Chaffee: It was a pleasure.

Outro: We will see you next month for Metal Coffee Shop Influencer.