 Good afternoon and welcome to Perspectives on Energy. This is Guillermo Sabatier, Director of International Services at HSI. Joining us today is Susie Espling, Solutions Engineer, and Jill James, Chief Safety Officer, both from HSI. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Guillermo. Thank you. So let me introduce one of you first here. I've had the pleasure of getting to know Jill not only in our conversations at work, but also through her podcast, the Accidental Safety Pro. Jill, would you tell us a little bit more about that yourself? Yeah, sure. Thanks, Guillermo. Happy to be here today. And thank you so much for having me. I've been in the field of environmental health and safety for 28 years, which just sounds like bananas moan of time. And here in the United States, I started out my career after graduate school, working for OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration as an investigator for about 12 years, inspecting all types of workplaces in both general industry and construction. And then I moved into healthcare for a while and then into higher ed for a little bit and had a stop in the world of poultry, all things poultry and life sciences before joining HSI as the Chief Safety Officer eight years ago in August. And at HSI, I kind of have a foot in a couple of different departments, one in product and helping out with product development within our sales team to meet with prospects and our customers and kind of represent that buyer and speak their language to them. And then of course with our marketing department, creating helpful aids for prospects and customers and especially a thing I'm really proud of called a safety training needs assessment where a person can take a little quiz and find out like where are our gaps? What are we forgetting we need to train on, particularly when it comes to compliance? And you're right, I've got a podcast, The XNL Safety Pro, it turned four years old in May, which is fantastic. And I have the privilege and honor of talking with EHS professionals from around the globe about how they do their work, what motivates them and sharing their best practices for my field of practice. And I get to be the keepers of their really phenomenal stories. Well, they're a great story to listen to and I really, really enjoy listening to your podcast, which is why once again, I'm really, really grateful that you're able to join us on today's show. So we're gonna have plenty to talk about. So I look forward to that. Susie, I've had the great opportunity to work with you on several projects that relate not only to the energy industry, but others as well. Now I understand you are now in a new role that puts you in a rather unique and precisely advantageous position for our discussion today. Would you wanna tell us more about your journey? Sure, it's more of a windy path, but it's all related to online education, training and development. So first started out assisting with the development of the first online program at the University of Arizona for a master's and PhD program. And then from there, I kind of went more to the technical training side with power and utility industry, as well as the construction, technical trades. And I took a right turn, I guess, and crossed over to the leadership, management and professional development side. Again, the common thread being e-learning, whether it be platforms, contents, services, about 24 years of experience and landed at HSI for the solutions engineering position. It's just like the perfect place for me. I get to help our clients with training initiatives for reliability, safety and productivity. So happy to be here with you. Well, thank, I'm really happy that you could join us. And I think we have the great mix of SMEs, really, to join us in today's discussion. The reasons we brought you here today, really, is to talk about one of these, something really important happening, not just in the electric utility industry, but also across all of STEM fields. And what they're looking at is a looming shortfall of engineers in the workforce. Now, according to the Bureau of Neighbor Statistics, economic projections point to a need of approximately one million more STEM professionals than the US would produce at the current rate by 2025. It's not a long ways away. It's a lot of NP jobs, unfilled jobs. So this is critically important as a challenge, especially if we hope to remain competitive as a nation or a group of nations and its economy in science and technology. So what's worrisome, at least to me anyway, is that this also affects STEM related roles. Not just in this industry, but across most others, especially when they're touched by STEM or technology one way or another. So for us, in this particular realm of expertise, workforce development becomes ever more important to not only attract and prepare new recruits, but also retain experienced employees. So how can HSI or companies like ours, right, assist customers and large corporations with this present and emerging need? So Susie, Joe, any answers to that? Right, gosh, I wish we had a magic wand, right? This topic of STEM comes up really often with the guests that I have on my podcast as well. The EHS profession itself is part of STEM. And so, and we're unique in that there's not a lot of us, but everyone uniformly says, we need more people and we also need to encourage people. So the call to action with my podcast guests and people in my profession has been to really spread the word about environmental health and safety being a STEM practice. And that it's not offered at every college and institution, but it is available in almost every state and then people can get educated in that particular profession. And so often my guests talk about how they're going back to their colleges, they're getting involved in their communities, they're talking at career days in high schools about the importance of the STEM world, particularly in health and safety. And then also the realization that, you know, you said, what did you say, Guillermo? We have a million, a million, we're gonna be short by a million. And rejection of unfilled jobs here. Yeah, and so there are so many young women who could be filling those roles who aren't part of this profession yet aren't part of the STEM profession. So for example, I have a college student right now who's studying computer engineering at a university. And in his class right now, there is exactly one woman studying computer engineering. And that's just bananas. And in my particular field of practice, only 10% of us are women. And so, you know, what can we do as influencers, as fellow engineers, as fellow STEM professionals to reach out to young women in particular in our communities, in our high schools, in our colleges, and encourage them and let them know, like, look at this world that could be open to you, you know? And it's a great profession. Well, and it's interesting you mentioned the STEM, opening up STEM, interest in STEM and opportunities in STEM for women and even underserved communities. Because one of the things that I've heard about that's been happening at one of the universities here in South Florida, Florida International University and in conjunction with the city of Miami. And it looks like they are working on a project in which where the state matches scholarship funds where anybody who wants to go to the university will be able to go to FIU. Any resident of the city of Miami will be able to attend the FIU. Should they at least get the grades. And that's having access to the opportunity, right? So especially in underserved communities, that is a big deal. Access is everything. So how can training help, for example, with workforce development in this particular aspect of the field? Oh my gosh, so many ways. So many avenues to go down. Obviously upskilling and cross-skilling is very essential onboarding. You know, when you hire an employee, how long does it take that employee to be a productive member of the workforce, right? So training can help with onboarding as well as retention and promotion, right? How do we take those employees and start retaining them instead of them going to other positions? You know, creating those pathways, those career paths for those individuals. We have our hypo or high potential employees that we wanna try to start grooming for the leadership and development roles, right? Leadership and management positions. They need some extra skills to be able to manage those, you know, people managers, if you will. Skill gap, we've got a lot of skill gap going on. Succession planning, right? We have to figure out how we can transfer that knowledge of our senior most valuable employees because we need to learn from them. You know, some of them I think that retirement is nearing and they think, oh, you know, I may not be as important but they're actually the most important that we have and we need to figure out how we can take those experienced members and have them become mentors and coaches with training and share that knowledge. So there's so many ways that training can help all the way around. You know, okay, and it is rather interesting, right? Because especially with the whole, with the succession planning, some of these senior employees, I mean, it takes almost four new recruits, I would say, to actually fill that role once they're fully trained. So it's quite the challenge. Right, absolutely. Yeah, and you know what Susie's talking about is this investment in the workforce benefits the entire company in building what people like to talk about is corporate culture, right? And so if employees know that the employer is willing to invest in them and invest in them for the whole of their employment, not just for onboarding, but for the whole of their employment to continue building their skills, that is an investment in your corporate culture, which, you know, shorthand means we care, you know, like we care about you as an employer, we care about you as a human being. Yeah. And that is really important in, only from the sense of employee engagement, right? And so that is really crucial when it comes to that because then you're looking at a, there's opportunities ahead, especially when you're employed somewhere and you're working, you give it all you've got, right? So there's that relational sort of, it's not transactional, it's more relational when you're in that workforce. So how does this translate across other industries, right? And the economy in general, so. Yeah, I mean, you know, a lot of industries, not just your power and utility, they're dealing with the same challenges, right? The skills that are transferable, having career paths so that, you know, they can work in different parts of the organization. You know, power and utility is very similar to construction, municipalities, manufacturing, right? Whether it's food or beverage, metals, pulp and paper, automotive, electronics, I mean, just that whole level of manufacturing, they're very similar in nature, oil, gas, you know, petrochemical, pharma. We also really need to try to work more with your local colleges, vocational training programs, job course centers and give additional training in those areas so that we don't see that million, you know, vacancy rate that you were talking about. So yeah, the infrastructure of our economy, you know, it touches every single part of it. Right. And one of the things too is, as given that shortage, one of the predictions is that that it's industries will begin to poach from each other when it comes to that experience and trained workforce. So it'll be a great time to be an engineer, but the thing is it's not, the industry will definitely, you know, be in serious need for that. Yeah, right. I mean, I think it's so important to not forget that all employees matter. All employees have a right to a safe and healthy workplace, including the tools they need to be able to do that job safely, regardless of the industry that they're in. You know, I'm often asked, well, who does HSI serve? You know, and Susie just rattled off, definitely a lot of key industries, but the real answer is everyone, you know, everyone. When we onboard a new employee at HSI, they say, Jill, Jill, you know, who do we serve? Who do we serve? And I said, think back to your first job. Think back to the first thing, the first job you ever did to earn a paycheck and people will rattle off things like, I worked in agriculture, I worked in construction, I was a barista, you know, I worked at a fast food industry. And I tell them, you know, I was a maid in a hotel cleaning rooms. And then the next question I ask, you know, when we were kids, when we had those first jobs, how many of us had health and safety training? You know, and the room almost always falls silent. And then we talk about the hazards and the stories and the things we remember that happened to us when we were kids. And you know, the thing is that every single human being, regardless of where they work, regardless of their age has, you know, they have an inherent right to be treated well and have the information, tools and training they need to be able to go home the same way that they arrived at any point in their working career, at any point. And that's really who we serve. Yeah, and that is so true. So now we've covered quite a wide berth when it comes to industries and what the industries needs are. So how can HSI help in this regard? Is this Guillermo where we really get to talk about everything that we do and we'll try not to be like a commercial? I don't think we have time. We don't have time to be a commercial. That's right, that's right. We're running out of time. All right, so, you know, HSI really is uniquely positioned for our customers, for today's market, like you're talking about. As our CEO likes to say, we sit at the crossroads of content, meaning training and learning and software. And that's really unique because we have both, you know, software and content and we're solid and strong in each. And everything that we have, we create on our own with the horsepower of over 500 skilled employees across the globe, including the three of us, right? And so when HSI started out as a baby baby company some 40 years ago, we were focused on first aid and CPR training and people might not know that about us. But we're much more than that today. And yet we remain strong to those roots in first aid and CPR and are one of the three largest nationally recognized providers of those services along with American Heart Association and the Red Cross. And so our authorized instructors use our curriculum to train and certify millions of people every year in over 100 countries, which is just amazing. And then we branched out. We branched out even further and our focus landed in the EH&S space, the environmental health and the safety space like mine, enabling the work of people like me to have access to a chemical management system, including everything, safety data sheet, which our listeners know all about those and help with environmental compliance reporting. And then working alongside OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, we became one of just a handful of providers authorized to offer the OSHA 10 and 30 hour general industry and construction certifications that are online in both Spanish and English. And by the time I came about and eight years ago and joined HSI, we had this giant library of OSHA compliance based training courses all delivered from our learning management system or from our customers learning management system. And today that library of courses isn't giant, it's ginormous. And the topics covered stretch way past OSHA compliance now. And to be able to please EHS people like me and into topics that support other disciplines and cross-functional initiatives. And we have content on diversity and equity and inclusion and resilience and leadership like how to run a meeting or have a difficult conversation and sexual harassment prevention and computer security and hazardous waste management. And it goes on and on from de-escalation techniques and active shooter response and bleeding control and software skills and all these topics and all the topics that are specific to the utilities industry that Susie's talking about today. And that's just a sample of content that we have for episodic training and ongoing learning all of which is delivered in multiple formats rather from online interactive to video to blended learning and even in-person learning which is a lot of what Susie's team does in your team, Guillermo. So I don't know, I've been around for a while now and I just kept dreaming like what's up next for HSI? What are we gonna do next? And I thought what would really be helpful were things for people to do audits and inspections and what could they use to manage assets or track injuries and illnesses or follow a checklist or maintain and share all of those policies and procedures that we all have to have. And instead of having things in tablets of paper or buried in email or stuck in a three ring binder or something. So that's when HSI's EHS software platform came to life and it's really exciting how it's helping support not only EHS people but engineering and maintenance and security and it's all being done from a single sign on. Oh, I love that. And yeah, and I get to use it quite a bit. I mean, I myself help with delivering some of the training especially when there's a lot of courses and I don't have instructors. So I mean, my career had been training for the last 10 years. So I get to deliver that and yeah, I'm doing that in three different sessions coming up in the next few months. So definitely enjoy. And we even have live simulation during classes which is really helpful for these operators. So always fun to do that. Always fun. So what does HSI offer? Not just for workforce development but other needs, right? Susie, I think. Yeah, I mean, all the topics that Jill mentioned, CPR, safety, employee development, productivity but it's really the combination of the solutions, right? The learning, management system, the safety data system, the safety management system but really how I think we need to start looking at it more is how can we get better engagement from our employees in addition to the regulatory compliance and the paper trails, right? But the questions need to be asked. How is it making our organizations better, right? Are we having fewer incidents? How do we know that if we're not tracking it? Are we more productive, you know? Are we proactive or are we reactive? So if we start seeing and because we're documenting it and we have a system to be able to organize that data, you know, we can be more proactive instead of reactive. You know, is our facility more reliable? You know, is there less downtime? So what happens when production stops in a manufacturing environment, right? That's loss of revenue, period. That should be tracked. We wanna make sure that our products are quality. You know, think about the systems behind it from a strategic standpoint. How can we improve the organization while making sure that we maintain a safe, you know, work environment? So I think it's just all of the different solutions and content that we can pull together that makes sense to the organization. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, you know, I think about solutions wise and what can we prove up, Susie? You know, you think about like just take one tiny piece. You know, maybe it's you're doing an audit and you're using a piece of technology to do that audit and you have multiple locations and maybe in the wayback machine, you did that on paper and to get things fixed, something, an outlaw or you found fixed, it was an email, a phone call, you know, essentially passing notes. Whereas with a piece of automation, you can push those notices out and you can also alert other locations that might have same or similar that can correct things in real time and you'll be able to track and see that. You know, you have visibility into that rather than finding, you know, did we put that in a spreadsheet document or is that in somebody's post-it note on a desk, you know, and being able to have visibility into that? Well, and it's really important to capture so many of these different aspects. I mean, one of the things that I remember when I was in the utility industry, right? And we were using an HSI product at the time and they started capturing near misses. So those are just as important and not more important because a near miss just means you were lucky, right? And that was an important thing to actually quantify and once they began to address the near misses, right? It's the overall injuries went down even further and they ended up with a goal of zero all the time, which is, which became achievable, especially in a power company. Well, usually there's sadly, there's always somebody getting hurt or there was somebody getting hurt that for a while was rather successful and because of that, so interesting. So one of the things that we talked about in another conversation we had was also education when it came to micro-predential, right? And we talked about that quite a bit. Jury, you want to talk a little bit more about that or because remember we got excited about the idea of being able to offer that and... Yeah, Susie, I think that was your wheelhouse. I think it was when we talked it. Yeah, I mean, you know, the programs are out there but there's not as many as we need, right? To train and get ready the workforce. So, you know, for example, there's a six to eight month waiting period before someone can start a new program but micro-predentialing is a specific part of a program that then that employee can start working, right? And continue their education and planning. So Google, Amazon, they're all starting to kind of look at this micro-predentialing because, you know, it's a little bit selfish because they're trying to fill their positions. Well, I think we need to start looking at, you know, like this, you know, not only in power and utility but manufacturing, all of those industrial skills, you know, focused professions. I mean, you know, and it was interesting because something as core business that we have, really, it's CPR and structural certification, right? It is, I mean, that is, we quite, we have quite the presence. The other day I was talking to one of my childhood friends and planning something unrelated to work and yet, you know, we're talking about him having a class of CPR training and then I asked him, hey, who are you certified with? And he said, well, HSI, I'm like, wow, small world, I work for them. So, you know, as long as he's known me after after college, I've always worked for the utilities. Now I'm working for the training company that supports not just the utilities but a whole lot of other fields, right? So it was rather heartwarming to hear that his certifications on that. So anyway, so now those conversations about, you know, seeing if we could actually use him for localized live instructor delivery of that training here in my region. So it should be nice. It's a great story. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. So we have quite a few things, right? We're, we got some white papers, some webinars here at HSI. I think we have slide number four we wanted to show. If Eric doesn't mind throwing it up there for a minute. Can we see it? Yeah, and I invite you to go see our website, hsi.com. But yes, we have content. Yes, we talk about all our solutions and everything. But honestly, check out the resource tab. Not only will you see the wonderful Jill in her accidental safety pro podcast that are fabulous, right? But we have other things like checklists for diversity, inclusion, and equity. We have guides to onboarding, right? How do you build an onboarding program? How do we get those individuals' trains instead of six weeks? How can we get it down to three weeks and get them more productive? We have eBooks, right? We have topics such as the cost of not training, qualified electrical worker webinar. I really encourage you to see that because you would be amazed at how many people need training specifically for electrical workers. Labor shortages, skill jobs, there's a plethora of resources there. And I really invite you to just kind of cruise around in there and see what interests you and how we can help. So hsi.com, that's our corporate website. We can find a lot of help and resources for not just training, but a whole lot of other fields as well, right? So that's kind of one of our last questions, right? So what resources do we have available to quantify talent shortfalls in this industry or any, really, right? And that's part of the consulting process that comes in, right? I imagine. Right, exactly. Susie, I'm sure you have an answer. Maybe we can both take a crack at it. But I really see hsi as we're positioned today as being that option to help each customer build a resilient organization. And resilient organization, meaning there are employees who are well-trained, skilled, who are going to stick with you and be able to help them upskill themselves throughout the lifetime of their career with you as the employer. Wonderful. Yeah, and don't forget, keep that strategy in mind. Keep training in the forefront of it, not as an afterthought. Don't do it because you have to do it. Do it because you want to do it and you want to invest in your employees. So keep this, align that strategy with your initiatives. And I think you'll find much better results. You'll find more engaged employees and much better products on the other end of it. Thank you. I definitely agree. So, Joe, any closing comments for? Yeah, closing comments, right? So I guess, like Susie said, strategy in mind absolutely. And remember that there's just so many partners that are available as help aids to employers. I know that there are so many of us when we think about, gosh, how many partners do we have? How many vendors are we using? And we hear from companies who are saying, oh, we have this one for this and this one for this. And pretty soon you've rattled off 14 different vendors that you're working with. And remember that more and more companies are becoming like HSI, where you can just have all those things found under one roof with one single sign-on for your employees. You're not trying to manage all these different types of software services to be that help aid for you. And you can really have visibility across your organization with one company. That becomes also rather important when it comes to just from a mere perspective of documentation. Making sure, having the same platform, having the same evidence, having the same... Dashboarding. Yes, yes, precisely. Well, it looks like that's all the time we have for today. I think we could probably have a few more episodes just on these conversations for workforce development and labor shortfalls and what our industries are facing coming up. So, but thank you so much for coming on today's show and I really appreciate it. Again, these 30 minutes just fly by. I mean, and it seems like we can go on forever because we have a lot to talk about really. And we just scratch the surface of what we offer at HSI. Again, hsi.com is where do you want to go and find the more information and look at our resources for it to help you with your workforce development needs among other things, right? Well, thanks, Carol. Thanks so much. Thank you, Suzy. Thank you, Joe. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.