The Lab Safety Gurus
Discover the secrets to enhancing laboratory safety without the hassle of navigating complex regulations and modifying established practices.
Tune in to the enlightening discussions led by the knowledgeable Dan the Lab Safety Man and infectious disease behaviorist Sean Kaufman. Together, they explore a wide range of lab safety subjects on a weekly basis.
Stay up-to-date with the latest trends and engaging debates surrounding lab safety by tuning in to every episode.
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The Lab Safety Gurus
Building a Resilient Laboratory Team by Mastering Onboarding and Offboarding Practices
Ever wondered what happens when you hire a cow to climb a tree? Join Dan Scungio and Sean Kaufman as we share our tales from the trenches of laboratory safety, revealing how mismatched hiring can throw a wrench in the gears of your lab's success. We're peeling back the layers on the onboarding process, offering you our top strategies to foster a safety culture that thrives. This isn't just about ticking boxes; it's about hands-on experience, team chemistry, and making sure the gears of your lab keep turning smoothly with every new addition.
Then we shift gears to tackle the lifecycle of laboratory staffing, dissecting the importance of clearing out hazards and the intricate dance of onboarding and offboarding. Listen as we illustrate the creation of bulletproof SOPs, hazard analyses, and the crucial steps to take when team members depart. It's a journey through the harrowing and rewarding challenge of building a lab team that not just survives but excels, with each hiring choice potentially steering the ship toward success or disaster. Buckle up for a candid conversation that goes beyond the beakers and safety goggles, into the heart of what makes a lab team truly outstanding.
Welcome to the Lab Safety Guru's Podcast. I'm Dan Scungio.
Speaker 2:And I'm Sean Coffin, and together we're providing safety insights for those working in laboratory settings doing safety together. Okay, Dan let me ask you a question.
Speaker 1:Sean, I'm scared when you ask me questions. No, I'm kidding, go ahead, I'm ready?
Speaker 2:I'm ready to climb a tree. I know the answer is no. How about a cow?
Speaker 1:To climb a tree?
Speaker 2:No, All right, let me ask you this this is the scary part. You ready? Is it a trick question here, get ready.
Speaker 1:How about? Would you ever hire a bird to climb a tree? A bird can get into the tree, but they're not really climbing it. I'm going to go with no on that.
Speaker 2:Very good, dan, I can ask you this In the lab, have you ever seen anybody who's been hired to climb a tree but they didn't climb the tree, even though it looks like they climbed a tree, Sadly? Yes. And what happens to the morale of a lab when somebody is hired to do a job and it doesn't look like, or it looks like they're doing the job but they're really not. What happens to the morale of the lab?
Speaker 1:It's so bad for the team, it's so bad On so many different levels. It's not good.
Speaker 2:Now let me ask you one more question, Dan, and for those out there listening too how many people have been in an environment and a workplace where they know for a fact the people that have been hired to do the job should have never been hired in the first place? Dan, Both my hands are up.
Speaker 1:But, Sean, what's worse is I have been a lab manager and I have hired people who shouldn't have been in the world.
Speaker 2:So wait, wait. I thought you said you wouldn't have hired a cow or a dolphin, but you did, I did.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:Dan, oh Dan, oh Dan. Well, they were disguised.
Speaker 1:They were disguised as a monkey and I didn't know they were a cow.
Speaker 2:This is, ladies and gentlemen. This is so important. This is what this podcast is about. Let's talk, dan, a little bit about onboarding and offboarding, because I think that we really, when we take a look at risk to a laboratory and a culture of safety, one of the biggest risks is that we can work so hard to develop something so special and, within an instant, hire the wrong person, and bringing in the wrong person to a team can destroy a culture of safety very quickly. Do you have any? I mean, do you have any examples in the years that you've worked in a lab, dan, where that has happened?
Speaker 1:Yeah, unfortunately, I know a few different stories where that has happened, where you know it's just somebody. So I work in a large system of laboratories and something that I've seen happen is where people get sort of shuffled around from laboratory to laboratory. They sort of buy their time, do their job, but poorly in one lab and they sort of know when they can start getting in trouble and so they start to get ready to transfer to another lab and the manager wants to get you know. They're like good, I'll get rid of them. They don't say anything to the other manager and they sort of pass them along.
Speaker 1:So if you're a leader in a laboratory and you've hired the cow to climb the tree, you're going to hear it from your staff. Hopefully they're vocal enough that they're going to tell you that this cow is not working out or you're going to hear it where it really hurts and that's in your results. Whatever the outcome of your laboratory is if it's research, if it's a health lab, if it's a clinical lab and suddenly results you're putting out aren't good, that's really bad for your laboratory and on all kinds of different levels. So lots of ways that that person can really hurt your laboratory really quickly, absolutely so, dan.
Speaker 2:Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to play ping pong here. I'm going to talk about three things that I think are critical for onboarding, and I want you, after I summarize my three things, you give me your three things Does that sound good Okay.
Speaker 2:All right. So here's first one number one. Number one here we go Never hire someone until you do an on-the-job interview, and here's what I mean by that. These are so small that we need to understand the chemistry between staff, and so I would honestly try to bring an individual in, and I know it may be difficult, I know it can be, but typically you're not hiring somebody with little to no experience. I think it would be a good thing to have a working interview to actually bring them in and have them work around the staff they're going to be around. Now, dental offices do this all the time because they realize one bad employee can destroy a whole team that's been years working together. So I always would suggest that when you're doing an interview, you have a chance for the team to not only work with and around an individual, and sometimes what you can do is even scavenger hunts. You don't even have to do a in the lab interview. You could do all sorts of just games where they all work together to play a game. They're going to get a feel for the staff members. So that's number one on onboarding.
Speaker 2:The second thing I want to remind you is, if you do hire someone, please don't make them spend the first week reading and doing administrative stuff. That is the worst thing you could ever do to a human being. If you're going to do that, let them do it from home. Give them all the admin stuff from home so that the very first thing they do when they come in is they start doing the job they've been hired to do, meaning you show them, you ask them to demonstrate it. You get them to be the highest level of competency through modeling the behavior you want them to do.
Speaker 2:Human beings are so excited to start their job that the worst thing you can do for the first couple weeks of the job is put them in a bunch of training programs where, by the time they finally get to do the job, they're exhausted and they're already withdrawn. So second thing on onboarding is don't bury them in that. Let them do that from home and when they finally get into the workplace with their staff that they're going to be working with, unleash them to do the behaviors that they've been designed to do. Now here's my third thing. Dan, you're still there, right? You're not sleeping on me.
Speaker 1:I'm here, I'm ready.
Speaker 2:The third thing is I want you to make sure that that first day of that employee's job they don't want to go home. You make it so memorable, you make it the best day. You have every single staff member spend 15 to 20 minutes with them, talking about what their first day on the job was like for them. You have them answer questions, you give them a mentor, you pass them around, you take them to lunch, but you make their first day a day that they'll never forget. You make sure they feel welcomed on the first day. Again, at the end of the day, they should want to come back the next day and not be worried about what the next day is going to look like. So, dan, those are my three onboarding tips. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 1:I like them especially. I just want to make a couple of comments on those firsts. In a summer arena, people can do laboratory. Students can do a clinical rotation where they're in the lab for two or three weeks as a student. What a great job interview that is. You get to know them pretty well. You get to know whether they're a cow or a monkey or whatever it is you're looking for. It's a great. It's like a working interview. It's fantastic.
Speaker 1:The second thing you said don't start them on board reading and doing computer-based training and things like that. I was talking to a manager a couple of weeks ago and they said that they make the person read all 300 policies and procedures before they get them out on the bench training. I said you do that really. The manager said to me if I don't do it, they'll never read them after once they get in the lab. I thought that's a terrible approach. I agree with you.
Speaker 1:So my top three things for onboarding the first one is kind of the same as yours Definitely meet the team, including all leaders and staff, while you're doing the interview. I also think you should provide scenarios and talk about scenarios. If this happens, what do you do? Because you want to get a sense of how their mind works and how they work through those things that could happen in the laboratory you're trying to hire them for. The second thing for onboarding to me is safety orientation. But I'm not talking, sean, about computer-based training or policies and procedures. I'm talking about a packet you use to go over with the employee, a packet that they can keep with safety information. But it also includes a walk through the lab, a safety walk. Hey, let's go walk our evacuation route. Here's your location. Let's go see the eye washes and safety showers. Let's go see where our spill kids are so they're not bored at the beginning of their job. They're still excited about learning the laboratory that they're going to get to work in. But you're also teaching them safety first thing.
Speaker 2:Do you know what I love, dan? What are safety items are? Do you know what I love about what you just said? I would pair that with food. I would call it a safety lunch, or you can even call it a safety brunch. Listen, food is a grounder for people when they're nervous and it brings people together, so you can almost call it a safety snack. You can call it a safety brunch. But if you did that and you took them for 30 to 40 minutes and did exactly what you just said, but you paired it with food, and you were able to enjoy yourselves and talk, I love that idea. I think that's awesome.
Speaker 1:I like it, and when you're in a big new building, I do that too. If we're going on the safety walk, I also am doing a building orientation. Here's the ATM, in case you ever need it. Here's the cafeteria. Let's have lunch. Yeah, that's great. I love that. A safety lunch, that's great.
Speaker 2:Our safety snack.
Speaker 1:Safety snack. The last one that I had was like as follow-up basically, with your new employee. You need to follow up, assess how they're doing, talk to them, ask them, find out what their level of excitement is on day two, day three, day four, while they're new, so that they know that you're an engaged leader, that you care about them and that you're making sure that they're still happy and excited to be where they are. You've got to consistently meet with that person and even the team to see how they think the person is doing. It's a lot of involvement when you bring somebody new on board, for sure?
Speaker 2:Well, I'll tell you this so you've done such a good job in onboarding that the reputation has gotten out, dan, that you never lose any staff. Because, by the way, that's one of the side effects for good onboarding is that you are able to maintain and retain good quality staff. But let's talk about the day when somebody decides the leaf.
Speaker 1:You're now off-boarding.
Speaker 2:Think about a couple strategies, dan. I've got three that come to my mind real fast. The first is no matter why they're leaving, treat the person with dignity and respect. Maintain professionalism, even if you're upset that they may be going. It's going to be a huge loss. Maintain a level of professionalism. If you're angry, if they've made a mistake, if it's a termination, always, always, treat the person with respect, with kindness, with humility, because it could prevent any actions against you in the near future. So that's a good thing. If it's appropriate, if it's appropriate, always try to celebrate a goodbye. Make somebody feel and know that they will be missed as part of the team.
Speaker 2:If it is appropriate for the reasons that they may be off-boarding, make sure you collect all the property and out there. Listen, ladies and gentlemen, if you're a research or public health laboratory, if you've got samples in freezers, transfer them or get rid of them. Do not let them sit in freezers so that 20 or 30 years from now, these diseases are detected and it makes international news. So transfer all samples, destroy samples or transfer them. Do not let them sit there at all. And, last but not least, please do an exit interview and make sure and I'm not just talking about an exit interview from the individual leaving, but exit interview from the team members as well. You want to make sure that you are going to replace what is leaving the organization, what is exiting the organization. You want to understand what the new deficit is so that when you're looking to replace that individual, you'll have the ability to do so in a good way. Dan things that come to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you pretty much echoed what I was thinking. Exit interview is first on my list. You always want to make sure you have that conversation. Unless it's a termination Hopefully it's not that but about why they may be leaving, what they thought of their time here, what they think could be improved in the laboratory, and definitely celebrate that goes back to food. If it's a good goodbye somebody's retiring, somebody's leaving, transferring definitely make a celebration of the work they have done in that laboratory. That's always important. And when you talk about you know, collecting property, if you're in like a research laboratory, there may be chemicals lying around that need to be maybe gotten rid of. There may be other things. Like you said, get the stuff out of the freezer, but think about all of the things a PI may be working with if they're gone from the lab. Don't just let it sit there. You see that a lot in research labs and that can be an old chemical can be as dangerous as an old biological as well. So you got to be careful about all of that.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, dan, and again, just, you know inherent risks, these risks that we assume every day as laboratory staff. You know whether it be chemical, biological, radiological. These are risks that we write SOPs for. These are risks that we see coming. These are things that we can do hazard analysis and risk assessments on. But one of the things that we really don't see coming, dan, is the risks that are associated, these residual risks that are associated with hiring the right people and with ensuring that, when people leave, that there is a formal process that ensures that the person exits in a manner that's going to reduce and minimize risk to the organization moving forward as well. So, any last thoughts you have, dan, on onboarding and offboarding. Yeah, it's not easy.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you think the person looks great in the interview and then sometimes you just end up with a dud and that's that's going to happen. But if you employ some of the techniques we talked about today, where you get to know them a little bit better before you hire them, your chances are going to be better, that you're going to build that great team and yes, I have built some great teams in my time but it takes time, it takes practice and you don't beat yourself up too much if you hire a dud. It's going to happen once in a while.
Speaker 2:We are the Lab Safety Gurus Dan Scungill and Sean Kaufman.
Speaker 1:Thank you for letting us do Lab Safety together.