Transcript
Marcia:
Welcome to Onsite Insights, a series for managers and supervisors responsible for onsite work activities at Berkeley Lab during the COVID-19 pandemic. Each episode explores core challenges or topics facing onsite workers and will feature guidance, success stories and practical tips for navigating new and emerging situations. The goal is to promote safety awareness and mindfulness, consistency in the application of policies and protocols and support for everyone in their return to onsite work. Hi, Onsite listeners, my name is Marcia .
Aditi:
And I'm Aditi.
Marcia:
And we're your hosts for today's Onsite Insights episode, which is focused on the topics of the role of onsite managers and integrated safety management in gathering feedback under our new normal.
Aditi:
Our guiding questions for this episode are: How have supervisor management responsibilities related to onsite work changed in this new environment? Considering these changes, how should supervisors apply the integrated safety management ISM process? What have recent employee surveys indicated regarding our work climate, and what can onsite supervisors make of this information? Marcia and I explore these topics with our five guests, Horst , Ellen , Tina , Chris and Lady , and we'd like to share insights from these interviews with you.
Marcia:
Let's start with your conversation with Horst, Berkeley Lab's Deputy Director of Research and Chief Research Officer. What were some key takeaways for you, Aditi?
Aditi:
I really love that Horst not only shared his principles of great leadership with us, but also, he's really specific about what these leadership behaviors around safety look like in practice for onsite managers at Berkeley Lab right now, and it was also really exciting to hear his thoughts about the incredible science that's being done safely and in new ways during this time. We'll play this conversation for you now, and we hope you enjoy.
Aditi:
Welcome, Dr. Simon, to Onsite Insights.
Dr. Simon:
Good morning, Aditi. Great to be here.
Aditi:
I'd love to start by asking you how and why does an onsite supervisor's leadership role matter, especially now as people are returning to the lab?
Dr. Simon:
I always like to think in terms of leadership about three elements of leadership that I find are most important, and I call them competence, commitment, and communication. If we look at the leadership role in the light of those three elements, what is different is in terms of competence, that means for me that the supervisor needs to know the work that is going on that's obvious, but in the time of COVID, that means more. The supervisor needs to know the environment, needs to know who does what and where. The what and where is very important because the supervisor needs to understand where are the risks that coming on top of the usual risk that we guys face in the workplace that are coming through COVID, where are opportunities for infections very simple.
Dr. Simon:
Then commitment is very important, simply because it means that the supervisors will need to be on site, need to be visible. Just because they need to be there by example, but when they are there by example, they also need to immerse themselves and think about how the workflow is going forward and anticipate anything that could go wrong, and spot unsafe working behavior. That's not just unsafe in the traditional way, but also in the unsafe under COVID conditions, that is spot people who work too close together, office configurations that are too crowded, and things of that.
Dr. Simon:
Communication is of course important, and this is something I think that will come up later in this podcast is that the supervisors need to stand up and say, "This is not acceptable," so this is an obvious safety rule that do a stop work, but there are many new things where you have to apply our stop work rules, that is break up groups that have too close a discussion, remind everybody about wearing masks visa sort of a direct communication. The supervisors need to be willing and ready to communicate about unsafe behavior, but I think there is more of a challenge from a supervisor. I think a supervisor should also engage personally and communicate with his or her staff about how are you doing.
Dr. Simon:
This is not just how is work going, but what are challenges that are there. I think it's important for a supervisor to understand the staff what else is going on possibly in their life and how can we from a workplace point of view be more supportive.
Aditi:
Absolutely, and you've gotten into this a little bit, but-
Dr. Simon:
Yes.
Aditi:
... what are some of the responsibilities that supervisors have now that are completely new, that they didn't have before?
Dr. Simon:
Yes. I think supervisors that somehow personally is very important need to think more of their team as a team and the commitment they have in a holistic way. Let us understand as I just said. How is my team doing and what are the issues that they're facing? This is actually since we're here mostly time, this episode about onsite work, I'd like to extend this to telecommuting work and say this is in particular important for telecommuting work. I would encourage everybody to at least ask and explore when you do a Zoom call, how is work going at home and are there any things that could be done better in terms of we have all these things available, ergonomic equipment.
Dr. Simon:
We have opportunities for taking administrative leave. I think a supervisor needs to be aware of those tools that are there and communicate these tools, make sure that his or her team is most equipped with the best tools.
Aditi:
What would you say from your vantage point since you have this institutional view? What are the benefits when a supervisor does this, when they check in with their employees in this way as you're describing and communicate? What are some of the outcomes that you see, or hope to see?
Dr. Simon:
I think the most important one is that we are trying to communicate you're part of a team. We are talking about team signs at the lab, and that means you need to include everybody and make sure that every team member has a sense of belonging, and this is best communicate by showing some additional care and concern about the work-life balance if you want to say it this way.
Aditi:
What advice would you have then for supervisors as they're coming on site in this moment if you were speaking directly to them?
Dr. Simon:
I first want to say of course thank you to everybody, in particular to people who come on site because we are still in the pandemic. We still have to be careful, and there are risks, additional risks. Thank you for working under those conditions. Knock on wood, the lab has been doing very well so far in controlling the outbreak, but it is still there, there are risks. Thank you for coming to the lab and in a sense, plan ahead in many ways. Just plan ahead not just in terms of where to wear a mask, but where to go and how to go there, and what to touch and what to clean up. There's much more planning that needs to be done before you return onsite, and I'd like to encourage everybody to really think through what the work day will look like and how to minimize risks.
Aditi:
That's fantastic. I'm wondering on the science and research side, could you comment on some of the research that is being done creatively now in this environment, or just the ways in which managers and teams are doing team science in a different way and still achieving our missions, any reflections on that?
Dr. Simon:
I think that observing the presentations that are presented once a week, now every two weeks on Thursday morning about research work that is going on focusing on COVID-relating research. I'm very impressed how well our scientists have adapted to the new environment and how much productivity there is in terms of output that's coming from our scientific community. I think that is a testament to the adaptability that we have a different environment, and everybody adapts to the different environment. Maybe one word I'd like to encourage everybody is to explore the tools that IT is providing that we have new productivity tools, so that we can work with these tools just like we got used to Zoom.
Dr. Simon:
There may be other things out there that can be used that will allow us to work as teams together as we move into the golden era.
Aditi:
After speaking with Dr. Simon: and hearing his reflections on the importance of competence, collaboration, and communication in managing safety and other onsite responsibilities, Marcia and I thought it would be helpful to drill down further into these themes and especially look at them through the framework of integrated safety management. I started by sitting down with Ellen , Berkeley Lab's deputy chief operations officer who spoke frankly about the challenges that onsite leaders face today around implementing ISM and the stories she's heard about how managers are navigating them.
Aditi:
Thank you so much Ellen for joining us. We're so lucky to have you.
Ellen:
Oh, thank you. I'm glad to be having this conversation.
Aditi:
I wanted to begin by acknowledging that Berkeley Lab's safety culture is rooted in the integrated safety model. Could you tell us a little bit about the impact COVID has had on the ISM for onsite work?
Ellen:
Yeah, sure, absolutely. It's been challenging, and I think you'll hear that from others as well. The whole concept of ISM is really a 5-step process, defining the scope of work, analyzing the hazards, developing and implementing controls, then performing the work, and then taking a retrospective look and getting feedback and applying lessons learned and improving your process, and then starting again with defining the scope of work, and working through that process again. One of the things that's challenging about COVID is that the way that we do our work has fundamentally changed.
Ellen:
Just the way that we're able to interact with each other has shifted, and that shift makes ISM challenging because we're having to figure out new ways to do ISM for sometimes even the most basic of interactions that we have with each other.
Aditi:
Absolutely. I'm curious then what would you say is an example, or how have you seen ISM implemented well in our current climate?
Ellen:
There are walkthroughs that happen on a pretty consistent basis across the site, and those are in research spaces. They're also where we're doing projects, just to see how people are doing and for leadership to engage. There was a really good example in one of our buildings I think where there was a PI, who was trying to figure out how to balance, and this is what everybody's going through, how to balance who should be on site to be able to get the mission work done and how to make sure that you have supervision there to be able to help the researchers who are on site.
Ellen:
This supervisor really had expected I think at first to not be at work every day, and really realized that it was incredibly important for them to be here every day, to be working directly with the researchers at the bench to be able to help answer questions in real time, help figure out how to coordinate how people would work together, how they would work their shifts working at the different benches, how they would work cleaning, how they would work taking breaks. Having that commitment is one really good example of someone who recognized that they needed to be as available as possible for the people on their team to be able to help them wade through some of the challenges of working through ISM in our new COVID environment.
Aditi:
That's great and since you've been helping manage the return to onsite work and all of the associated efforts from the start of shelter in place, I'll ask what would you say are the most important aspects of the transition for onsite supervisors?
Ellen:
Yeah. I mean there's a whole team of people that have been working on this, and I'm one of many who've been helping with this effort. I think one of the things that is really important is as people come back to the lab, as we start to do new work at the lab, even if there are people that are on our sites that are doing work already, but perhaps what they're doing is shifting, to just always question the assumptions that we have, and think about what are the barriers that exist with COVID that didn't exist before, and question those and think about who can you communicate with.
Ellen:
There is a bit of I think trial and error, but having that extra layer, thinking about making progress in terms of our communications with each other. We're not going to get it perfect every time, but continuing to strive for improving communications and making people safer always.
Marcia:
It's been very helpful to have our leadership acknowledge how difficult this current environment is.
Aditi:
Yes, and they're also very aware of the practical implications of the adjustments that are required for onsite work activities right now. In fact, Ellen and Michael Brandt recommended that we talk with the supervisor who is trying new ways of implementing ISM on site, so that our listeners can learn from her experience, especially since she's been executing work on site and overseeing very large team.
Marcia:
Right. We wanted to spotlight Tina who is the director of lab operations at Emery Station East. This was a great interview and an excellent example of ISM, as well as communication in action. Have a listen.
Marcia:
Welcome Tina. Thank you so much for joining us.
Tina:
Thank you for having me.
Marcia:
I'd love to start by asking you some of the ways in which you've been managing ISM within Emery Station East during COVID, any stories that you can provide.
Tina:
Sure. Managing ISM is, and I'll say this over and over again during our conversation is that it's a very iterative process, and it's one where I can't just work by myself, or even within my own internal team to assess how things are going because we're not all on site at the same time. We don't do the same work. The work that I do is very different from the work that the researchers do. I'm in constant contact with everybody who is there on site and remotely, so that we are all on the same page with the remote supervisors, the division directors, upper lab management, safety facility personnel, and as well as the most important one is soliciting feedback constantly from the workers, who are in the trenches there because it will impact them the most from what has cascaded from up above.
Tina:
Just trying to manage all the different layers that we have to make sure that everybody maintains safe social distance, while trying to get their work done and just being very practical about all of our protocols that we write. Sometimes, I feel like people can say, "Well, we should do X, Y and Z." It sounds good in theory, but in reality, it's hard to put into practice. We have to constantly be improvising and making sure our processes are constantly changing with our changing environment.
Marcia:
I'm curious there are a couple different follow-up questions here. First of all, how have you been collecting feedback? What have you found that's been useful for your employees?
Tina:
A couple of different routes to collect feedback. One is that I try to hold frequent feedback sessions, or town hall meetings with the division director to solicit feedback on the people who have been experiencing working on site. We try to do that at least once a month. I also provide a Emery Station specific website that I've put content on and on that website, I put a feedback form on there, just to make sure that people don't feel comfortable speaking up during those town hall meetings, that there's another avenue they can go to. In addition to that, every week, I send out weekly updates for things happening the following week. Because things are changing so rapidly all the time, I have to give sometimes last minute direction on what phase we're going into, things that are changing at the facility.
Tina:
Those are opportunities for people to send emails back to me asking, "Well, this wasn't clear, or you said this, do you really mean that?" That helps me reanalyze my communications on that front to make sure that everybody is understanding what's going on. A lot of different avenues for people to give me feedback and for me, before I was working remotely, I was on site every single day and I'm very close to all the people that work on site. There's about 200 people that work in our facility, and I can say that I know everybody by their face and by their name. People are very comfortable approaching me if there's any problems.
Marcia:
You mentioned earlier do this all the time, where there's something that you imagine will work really well and in practice, it doesn't. Could you share an example of something like that, where from idea to implementation, it had to morph?
Tina:
Sure. We are one of the very few buildings that are allowed to perform shift work. Shift work means that we take part of the people that are working on site, and we have them choose either morning shift or afternoon shift. Each shift is about six hours long, and they cannot overlap each other. Because of the opportunity to work morning or afternoon, I had realized that it's very, very difficult to schedule people for a morning and afternoon shift, and it's really, really hard to be dynamic. Whereas before, people were very used to coming whenever they wanted to work on their project, and now they have to think ahead, making sure that they have a static schedule, so that it's manageable and scalable.
Tina:
Because now we have over 130 people coming on site in and out on a weekly basis, it's very hard to manage if people cannot maintain a static schedule. What myself and other managers initially proposed was that people give up their workspace. Everybody there has personal workspaces, and what we had thought of was all right, give up your workspace and everything will be shared. Every bench will be a shared workspace, so that people can essentially hotel, or borrow people's spaces when they're coming in for their am or pm shift. Thinking about brainstorming, theoretically that would work if people cleared off all of their shelves, put them into a bin and put them into a rack in a hallway somewhere.
Tina:
When you come to work, you grab your bin, you grab your supplies, and you hotel at any of the workspaces. When I brought that communication out to people, it didn't work out that well, mainly because people have very sensitive instruments at their locations, or some things are very sensitive to contamination. A lot of those things got brought up to the point where okay now, we probably need to have a meeting to solicit ideas from the worker's point of view versus just brainstorming with management. Because like I said, it's important to know what happens on the ground versus remote workers that just says, "Well, theoretically, this idea would work, but when you cascade it down to the workers, they didn't agree that this would be a viable solution."
Tina:
We brainstormed a little bit with the workers, and then also had to of course involve more practical solutions to what we had formulated before. We met in the middle, where people now have fixed workspaces. Your space is either going to be a morning shift space, or an afternoon shift space, and you're either going to come in the morning all the time for your own workspace, or if you need to come in the afternoon, that's when you borrow somebody else's workspace. That's an example of something that we thought one type of solution would work and of course, it did not for the workers that are on site, and we met somewhere in the middle.
Marcia:
Yeah, and that process I think it's really helpful for other managers who are probably in a similar boat to hear about. What have been your biggest challenges, you managing A, having been on site, then moving remote, having more people come on site? Curious what have been the biggest challenges for you.
Tina:
I think the biggest challenges is to it's difficult to coordinate many things off-site, especially when if I had to put some engineering controls on there, physically doing work on site is very, very challenging because we have very limited onsite time, very limited badge swipe opportunities. It's difficult to do things and have to try and rely on other people because we all know if you have an idea and you know what to do, it's always faster if you just do it yourself, but sometimes I just can't wait a week to complete the tasks. It's always a struggle trying to communicate my needs to other people who are on site to help me.
Tina:
Sometimes sending documents remotely and trying to explain that execution remotely has definitely been a challenge, especially if I'm relying on someone who's never done it before or has zero context, but yet that task still needs to be done to meet a certain deadline. Sometimes, that's been a big struggle.
Marcia:
How have you done that? That does sound objectively like a really challenging thing. What have you learned about maybe how to walk someone through something that they've never done before remotely?
Tina:
I learned to take a lot of pictures. I learned how to train other people to take a lot of pictures. Visual inspections through these pictures have been really, really helpful. Definitely, I feel like I've improved a lot in my communication skills and clarity in my instructions, so that helped a lot. I just think throughout this whole process, working remotely at home has just made me realize that communication is just the utmost importance in anything that you do, whether it's research, whether it's operations, working on a team. Anything that you do, it requires someone having very good communication skills.
Marcia:
Now this question of what practical advice might you offer other managers who are struggling with ISM, or maybe are just newly through coming on site or managing a team on site?
Tina:
There are a few key things, and one of the key things is communication is key, but other than that, being succinct, having clarity and organization in your plans. I don't like to do a lot of things ad hoc just because without any strategy involved, it's really hard and difficult to get things done on site. Especially if you have limited time on site, it has to be well planned. It can't just be, "Oh, let's do this and then let's do this," and then you run out of time to actually focus on whatever your main topic is and why you actually went on site for. Planning ahead is very, very important and it may seem obvious, but you have to apply this to every situation, large or small scale, whether you own a lab of 50 people or your lab only has seven people.
Tina:
Constant assessment of your process and soliciting feedback is also key to being successful in agile learning, and assessing what works and what doesn't. You have to be very open to what the workers are telling you. I know that it's hard to get a lot of opinions from different people. Sometimes you just flood it with people's opinions, especially if it's hundreds of people giving you feedback, but you have to be open about it because what they feel is real, and they are the ones who are actually utilizing the lab and the facility. I think paying attention to that and being open to critical feedback is very important.
Marcia:
Tina's emphasis on remaining open to what people are saying about their experience utilizing onsite facilities and truly learning what happens on the ground is compelling and complementary to the principles of ISM. This interview also sheds light on how this environment amplifies the importance of detailed and planful communication for safety. In the same spirit of learning from first-hand work experience, the lab has conducted pulse surveys to measure employee satisfaction in various areas. In fact, this podcast was created in response to results indicating a need for more specific support for supervisors given the new complexities of overseeing onsite work.
Marcia:
In this next segment, we'll explore these surveys and key themes. We'll delve into high-level results in how supervisors can have a positive impact in this work climate. To discuss, we're joined by Lady , Berkeley Lab's chief diversity officer.
Marcia:
Thank you for joining us Lady.
Lady:
Thank you, great to be here.
Marcia:
Lady, let's begin with discussing the pulse surveys and how they work. Can you tell us a little bit about the structure and how often they're administered?
Lady:
When the lab first entered shelter in place, senior leadership really wanted to get a sense of how our employees are being impacted by this current situation, and also understand if they're satisfied with how the lab has handled the pandemic. A big shout out to Leticia Ericson and HR for connecting us with the UC office of the president to help administer the survey, and ask questions related to impact and satisfaction. Since June of this year, we've sent out three pulse surveys. One in June, July, and August. It went out to a random sample for each round, and we're currently in the last round of this summer cycle. So far, around 1200 employees have now completed the survey.
Marcia:
Now that's a really great sampling. Out of the data, were there any themes that emerge that are most relevant to onsite supervisors?
Lady:
What we noticed with all three surveys is that the satisfaction levels for onsite employees were actually lower than off-site, or teleworking employees. We wanted to dig deeper into the comments and try to understand what some of those main issues are. When looking at the comments in pulse survey number three, the top five themes that emerged are swallows. The first one is around seeking flexibility and supervisor support for work-life balance, and bringing our work environment to our home space, especially for those who are parents and have distance learning responsibilities with their children going to school online.
Lady:
We need to do continued education and encouragement to be able to show understanding and support for our employee's individual situations. Related to that, the second theme is around workload adjustment. Not only are employees looking to supervisors for flexibility related to personal responsibilities, but they also understand that this is not business as usual. They want to revisit their goals, look at their timelines, and see if there's flexibility around adjusting their workload, deadlines, and expectations. Third, there was a theme around telework. For our current situation, some onsite employees are looking to rotate with other team members, so that they're not the same people who are on site all the time if at all possible.
Lady:
Fourth, there was some concern that some onsite colleagues are becoming more lacks with COVID safety controls and protocol. We need to do more emphasis on strengthening our safety culture and connect our health pledge with the behaviors that we want, and being accountable for one another's health and safety. We also want to cover the need to empower colleagues to be upstanders and to respectfully intervene with a pleas to gently remind colleagues and in response, having the person being told and reminded to respond with a thank you as a gesture of gratitude and to show a respectful work environment.
Lady:
Finally, the theme of stress, well-being, and mental health showed us that employees are still looking for supervisors to continue checking in with them, to see how they're doing and to continue to send a message of care and empathy. As you know, many people are struggling right now that extension of care can really boost morale and a sense of inclusion.
Marcia:
Yes, absolutely and without knowing, supervisors are extending this care on behalf of the organization. Thank you Lady for covering these themes very much centered around flexibility, especially as it relates to work schedule and work expectations. We also heard about personal safety and providing resources for issues related to stress and well-being. Now could you tell us a bit about the progress we've made since beginning to return people back to onsite work? Have you seen any trends upward in overall satisfaction? If so, in what areas?
Lady:
I know we've been experiencing a lot of difficulties and challenges during shelter in place, but there have also been many positive aspects related to how the lab has responded during this time. The survey results tell us that colleagues really appreciated the programming related to community building and being able to virtually socialize, so that includes our lab-wide open mics, the team coffee hours and so on. There was also appreciation for the resources and programming related to wellness, including our daily stretch breaks, counseling resources through UC, and other benefits that we have, so that's been really positive. We've also heard an appreciation for leadership presence on site.
Lady:
We've had some of our leaders do occasional walk-arounds to talk to people and try to understand what they're experiencing. The idea for an onsite gratitude meal courtesy of the lab actually came from a survey comment that talked about the need for onsite appreciation. The main message here is that we're continuing to ask colleagues how they're doing. We're taking notes on prioritizing those actionable comments, and we're trying to respond accordingly in order to help and support our onsite teams.
Marcia:
Thank you. I'm hearing a lot of connection from the survey results, trends in the comments submitted to actions the lab has applied and adopted, which is really great to hear. Lady, based on the survey results, is there a key takeaway or something you'd like to spotlight for onsite supervisors?
Lady:
I think if there's one thing that we're learning from these surveys is that employee experience resonates at the personal level, and that their experience of the lab culture mainly resides at the level of their teams. What that means is that onsite supervisors truly have a direct impact on each team member's experience of the lab culture, and even whether or not they feel like the lab cares about them. What we want to do is to continue engaging with onsite supervisors as our ambassadors, so that we can continue the important work of advancing our scientific mission, while also balancing the need for creating a work environment that puts our people's health, safety, and well-being first, and continuing to send a message of empathy and support for all of our colleagues.
Marcia:
Lady's summary of the pulse surveys enabled us to get a stronger sense of the climate and the important impact supervisors have on the employee experience. It also reminded us of the actions already pursued in direct response to the valuable feedback gathered through this source. In the same spirit, employees returning to onsite work may ask supervisors what the lab has done to support a safe return. Our next guest, Chris discusses these efforts more extensively.
Aditi:
Chris is the return to work project manager. In this capacity, he leads the working groups in creating our COVID controls to ensure we keep our employees safe during the pandemic. Thank you so much Chris for joining us today.
Chris :
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Aditi:
I'd love to start by just talking about overall the activity that's been happening around the return to onsite work. What are some of the efforts that have been made to ensure this safe return?
Chris :
Early on, there was a lot of effort by a lot of really great people at the lab to put a system of controls in place to keep everybody safe. I think early on, we created the training, the COVID-19 training by EH and S that really goes through in detail what it's like when you come on site and what are some of the roles you have to follow when you get here. We put in place the work planning and control system to make sure employees are aware of the risks on site. They're signing up and they're using their ISM process to be safe, while they're working on site.
Chris :
We also put in place a health pledge, where after the training, employees are looking at the pledge and really pledging to think of the safety of themselves, their families, and their co-workers by ensuring they don't come on site if they have any symptoms of COVID-19.
Aditi:
What are some of the efforts that employees should take, or controls that we have in place when employees get on site?
Chris :
When employees return to site, the main controls are make sure you do your health pledge. When you come into the gate, you're going to have to badge in. It's really important that you wear your mask, that you maintain that six feet of social distancing. Actually six feet is minimum, more is better, and that you wash your hands and you're really mindful to clean your workspace. Those three things are the most significant controls we have to help protect people.
Aditi:
These are really important measures, and it's helpful for the supervisors who are listening, the managers who are listening to amplify each of these efforts. We'd love to hear more about just all of the collaboration that's been happening behind the scenes that you allude to, so the different task forces that have been involved in standing up these efforts. Could you talk to us about those?
Chris :
Yeah, it's been incredible we've had multi-divisional and area representation on multiple task force. Some of the task force we're currently working with, we have the building capacity density working group, and it's a group of folks the EH and S facilities, site management, as well as represents representatives from each of the areas. They literally have gone building by building, floor by floor and room by room to determine what the safe capacity in each space is for workers given the COVID controls. They've documented that entire process in what's called the flag report. We hired a company called FLAT Architecture to help us with that evaluation, to make sure we could return people safe to spaces.
Chris :
Now we have a second team, they're called the ventilation working group, primarily made up of EH and S and facility HVAC experts, but also some scientific experts. They spent time looking through over 200 articles and periodicals to see what the risks related to COVID and having it be transmitted through the ARR. Based on their research and their findings, they've helped shape our policy and procedures for those returning to work. Another team is called the workspace reservation system team. They're implementing a tool where schedulers in each of the divisions will be able to schedule people into space, and ensure that we don't exceed our safe capacity at any time.
Chris :
On top of those formal working groups, we've had an overall committee called the transition leadership team. It consists of high level managers from each of the research areas and operation areas. They've overseen the whole project and helped us with our system of assurances, and all of this has been rolled up. We report into executive management. Every Monday morning, we start with the group of four, the top four executives at the lab. We roll through and share the information with the ALDs with the DOE, the [Dasso 00:39:44] side office, and then finally on the all managers meetings on Monday afternoon.
Aditi:
Huge project. How are you measuring success with all of these disparate pieces and...
Chris :
Yeah, our overall goal is to significantly reduce the transmission of COVID-19 on site. We're working really, really hard to keep people safe. On a weekly basis, we track metrics. One of the metrics that we look at is have employees completed their training, their work planning control, and their health pledge. Particular importance is to make sure that employees are really taking seriously the idea that they're checking their own symptoms and if they believe that they have any symptoms, they don't come to work. Our statistics on that is we're somewhere between 95% and 97% every single week, so it looks great. I think everybody's doing an excellent job. In addition to that, we have several layers of controls.
Chris :
Executive management, Mike and Michael and Paul Golan from the site office, they're doing safety walk-arounds once a week. Independent of that, I come in weekly usually for a morning, and I walk different areas of the lab, talk to employees, and see what's going on with my own eyes. Then we make corrections based on what I see, and then we've asked each of the areas to have an assurance plan, where their managers are checking in with their employees and doing walk-arounds as well to ensure they're following the controls. This multi-layer oversight of the system is how we ensure people are safe at the lab.
Aditi:
Fantastic and then in terms of supervisors, what advice would you have for them and managers who are trying to help us meet these metrics?
Chris :
Yeah, I think the big challenge of being a supervisor today is our work space has changed so significantly given the pandemic. It's created a lot of challenges. Some of those challenges are just following the new rules and understanding what those are. I think you guys could really make sure you understand what the new COVID controls are and ensure you're talking to your employees about that, but equally important is to really be aware of the mental fatigue that we're all under. With the pandemic and the fires and everything happening in our environment, it's a lot to absorb, and I think it's really important to check in with your employees, make sure they're doing okay. If they're struggling, offer them resources.
Chris :
I think that's one of the very important things that we can do, and then I think the final thing is really make sure that you're talking to them about these controls and making sure they're following. It's really important for you to set the example and do the same thing when you're on site, you follow the rules and that if you see people particularly your own employees that were slipping a little bit, it's okay to go up and talk to them and gently remind them, that to put on their mask or stay more than six feet apart. I think those are the things that the supervisors could really do to help.
Aditi:
Wonderful. Thank you so much for talking with us today.
Chris :
Cool, thanks a lot. It was a lot of fun.
Aditi:
Wow, what an incredible amount of work goes into creating a safe environment on site. There's so many through lines we heard across our five interviews. I heard a lot of emphasis on communication as a strategy and tactic, from gathering feedback, to checking in with employees, to delivering digestible information through many different accessible channels. At least I've noticed for myself that COVID has forced all of us to be much more thoughtful and attentive to how we communicate with one another, and it's especially important when we're talking about safety. How about you Marcia, what stood out to you?
Marcia:
Yes, everything you said very much resonated with me as well Aditi. The interviews shed light as many stated that the situation is changing constantly and that as onsite supervisors, it's helpful to support continuous mindfulness and agility. This means remaining open to different solutions to support a safe working environment.
Aditi:
I really love that, that's spot-on.
Marcia:
Well, onsite listeners, I think that's a wrap for our first episode of Onsite Insights. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll look forward to seeing you again at episode two for more insights. It will be all about what you can expect logistically and practically when you return on site. We'll be joined by Blair Edwards from security and emergency services, John Tully from facilities, and David von Damm, division director for security and emergency services. It's going to be really helpful for anyone who is gearing up to return to the lab in an upcoming wave. Please be sure to join us. Thanks again for listening and until next time, stay safe out there.