by Ben Goodheart, David Provan, Ron Gantt
This podcast isn't meant to make you feel better about your ideas on safety. A lot of them are probably wrong. We're not saying you aren’t smart or that we are, but probability isn't in our favor. It’s just a recognition that there are a lot of shitty ideas about safety out there, and pure chance suggests we all share some of them. This podcast is here to fight safety bullshit. The three of us – Ben, Dave, and Ron – are here to talk about organizational safety, resilience, and human performance, but with a different perspective on things than you might be used to. Punk rock is about abandoning ideas that aren’t useful, being unafraid to push boundaries and sometimes fail, and doing it yourself when the things you need don’t exist. Here’s what Greg Graffin from Bad Religion says: “Punk is a process of questioning and commitment to understanding that results in self-progress, and by extrapolation, could lead to social progress. Punk is a belief that this world is what we make of it. Truth comes from our understanding of the way things are, not from the blind adherence to prescriptions about the way things should be.” Sounds good to us. Question everything. Do cool shit that works. Merch at www.punkrocksafetymerch.com
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Publishing Since
3/25/2024
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April 30, 2025
First off, every new episode is sort of a surprise, but making it to Episode 30 is about 29 more than the boys expected. And of course the title is from a NOFX album. In celebration of Ron's (new) real job at a bit of a startup, we thought that talking about how you'd build your safety empire from scratch might look. The boys' discussion centers on starting with executive leaders to create a vision for what really good safety would look, sound, and feel like. There's - shockingly - a fair bit of BS in the middle, but the boys eventually get around to a few of the benefits of building things up in a small organization: there's room to do some experimentation, a chance to manage messaging about safety with a small crew, and the opportunity to come up with a solid 30/60/90-day plan (or 100-day if you use the Australian conversion rate). The consensus, if you can call it that, is that agreeing on principles around safety may not be enough. You need some specifics, and in a small group, that might come from consistently having in-person time between leaders and safety people. It might be asking folks what certain approaches to operations might look like to meet acceptable levels of safety risk and then giving people choices. There's more than one way to write a song, too, so it's not the end of the world. Anyway, when you get the chance to start from scratch as a band, there aren't a lot of people at the shows. It's a good time to figure out your tone and get to know your audience. Same in an organization.
April 16, 2025
Two-thirds of the dickheads on this podcast are consultants, so an episode about consulting seemed like a good idea. Also, there's a lot of chatter at conferences, online, and probably in bars that play ska music about how safety has just become commoditized and monetized. Usually, it's a consultant trying to sell something who's saying that. Ben, Ron, and Dave head into the dimly lit back alleys where consultants apparently live to look at the good, the bad, and the sometimes fucked up realities of bringing external help into organizations. The reality for many organizations is that more help isn't coming. The safety team isn't hiring, and folks are constantly being asked to do more with less. The boys think that's where good outside help is huge. Like the Wolf in Pulp Fiction. Sort of. The role of consultants as "force multipliers" isn't made up, but they should be there to sit in with the band when Ron doesn't show up, not hang out forever like Yoko. And if some chucklefuck has an answer before they even get to know your organization, you should probably show them the door. The crew examines why some consultants do better than others and how organizations can best use outside expertise (like a solid opener or a supergroup like MFATGG). Now that he has a real job, Ron adds a few points from the perspective of someone actually hiring consultants to help out. The short version is that if you're picky about who you let on stage, a consultant can be a lot of help. Watch out for the assholes that show up already knowing all the answers (or with nine dudes carrying horns - that's a ska band), though. Bonus: Includes discussions about snowboarding, basketball, and potential international deportation policies.
April 2, 2025
It's almost a theme at this point, but if you guessed the episode title is also a NOFX song, you're the winner. It's a pretty deep cut from the Backstage Pass album, but it gets right to the point of this episode - that culture shapes meaning. And safety can mean a lot of different things when we aren't careful to understand it in the context of culture. We could have gone with the Pennywise song "Society," but we didn't. It's cool if you like that one better. In this episode of the PRS podcast, the boys discuss the challenges of implementing global safety standards while being culturally sensitive. They highlight the importance of understanding local practices and adapting safety protocols accordingly. Ron shares some experience with a learning team in Malaysia and the cultural barriers that can make effective communication super difficult. If you only get one takeaway from this one - and that's a stretch sometimes - it's the need to standardize outcomes, not processes or even policies, as a way to aim for global consistency with locally relevant practices. Safety is very much affected by imposing Western safety norms on diverse cultures, and without a solid interpretation of local and societal norms, that can be dangerous. Ok, get to it then.
David Provan
Brent Sutton
Unknown author
Todd Conklin
Safety FM
Andrea Baker & Matt Florio
Georgina Poole
Nippin Anand
James MacPherson
Unknown author
TED
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson
ABC listen
Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher
ABC listen
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