Transcript Nicole Stempak: Welcome to this episode of Talking EHS, part of the Great Question podcast series produced by Endeavor Business Media’s Manufacturing Group. Here’s where you’ll get news, information and compelling conversations on the latest developments in workplace safety. I’m Nicole Stempak, managing editor of EHS Today, which you can find at ehstoday.com. Welcome to the podcast. This extra special podcast features two safety professionals from Fastenal Company, a business-to-business supply chain provider and a wholesale distributor of everything from fasteners to safety to electrical to paint and painting supplies. Joining me today is Ryan Tucker, Corporate EHS and Sustainability Senior Manager, and Sara Weaver, Corporate EHS and Sustainability Manager. They will both be presenting at Safety Leadership Conference 2025, which is being held October 20-22 in Phoenix, Arizona. More information about the conference can be found at safetyleadershipconference.com. It’s a pleasure to have you both here today. Fastenal is a supplier, manufacturer and distributor of, among other things, PPE. How does that impact Fastenal's approach to safety? Sara Weaver: That's a great question, Nicole, and I'll answer that one. So to give a little bit of context to our organization and what we do, you're correct. We're an industrial distributor and we deal primarily with other businesses. So we're in business to business sales. So we're typically not dealing with the average consumer like you or me, we're dealing with other businesses. And a lot of times that has us dealing with other companies who have a similar interest that we do, you know, to run safe and profitable businesses. So they look to us for products that can really be anything within the safety sector, which is very broad, that tends to be a lot of personal protective equipment, but it can include other things because Fastenal's model is really about providing services to our customers and not just about providing products. So we really try to partner ourselves, position ourselves as experts to our customers to provide things like audits and inspections, trainings and services, you know, even helping develop plans like PPE plans for our customers. So we really establish ourselves as experts within that safety consumer world for our our partners and because of that it really makes them look at us, you know where we have to walk the talk, right. You know, to be an expert in the field, we have to also be a really safe company. We want to be a safe, profitable business just like our customers and our stakeholders do. So what that means is, you know, we all want the same thing, but it definitely does hold us to a higher level of expectation and we really have to make sure that we hold ourselves to a higher standard. And it's not just about, you know, showing that to our customers in the way that we show up in their facilities every day, but they really ask us to prove that. So there's a whole aspect to the industry that if people don't live in this side, but that they may not be familiar with, but our customers use what are called third party verifiers and they ask us to actually prove our performance to them. And this is something that happens every single day, day in and day out. We constantly have customers reviewing our performance in different EHS areas. So it could be things like injury performance or regulatory violations, programs and processes, trainings that we provide. Now we're getting more and more of the sustainability programs and more on the ESG side of things. But our customers are literally asking us to prove to them that we do the things that we're outselling them and that we say that we do. So in terms of you know how that changes our approach or how that impacts our approach, we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard and we have to perform at a really high level. So that's something that's always impressed upon our goals and our objectives and how we're performing in our business because of that unique aspect of how we operate. Stempak: You're presenting about Fastenal’s safety journey at Safety Leadership Conference. Can you take me back to where Fastenal was before you started this journey, say, a decade ago? Ryan Tucker: And we appreciate the opportunity to speak at the Safety Leadership Conference coming up here in October. And if we look back, you know, a decade, back to where Fastenal's EHS program was, we did a relaunch of our program in 2013 and really when we look back to that time frame, we were focused on, you know, compliance driven requirements, OSHA standards, really keyed in on the occupational health and safety side part of protecting the employee, now if we look where we're at more of the ESG sustainability, you know, security, ISO driven 14001, 45001, but really at that time frame we were focused on developing and improving programs, processes that were in place in our EHS world. Just to give an example, at that time frame, we call them EHS engagements. We completed 68,000 for the year and those types of engagements at that time frame might have been an audit or it might have been a safety committee driven or it might have been a compliance OSHA regulatory requirement to to complete that training. As we fast forward to last year, we completed 250,000 EHS engagements. So as we walked through and developed our processes, you know, we really looked at one, what can we focus on once, you know, the baseline requirement of compliance, the standard, but really we focus going forward on educating the employee, educating the leadership, developing those employees. So maybe they understand what their requirement is or why we're doing it, but also through that journey was the leadership involvement piece of really getting them where EHS might be looked at in other companies or past history of driven by just one department where we really looked at the focus of everyone from the employee level to the EHS team to the upper leadership at the site level or the executive leadership and had very good support and as you can see with the processes we've built and the amount of involvement with the blue team, we've seen great strides there. Stempak: That's incredible. So your presentation is titled Fastenal's Big Four Journey. So can you explain what those big four are and maybe what prompted Fastenal to start this program? Tucker: So when we look at the Big Four journey and it, it wasn't just like one incident or an occurrence that drove that a lot of times you'll hear of, maybe this serious incident sparked a change within a company and really what we looked on it was kind of ties into what I was talking about of the focus of the employee and beyond the compliance piece. So, we look back prior to that, we were in compliance. We had all these programs in place, but we really dove down to look at, you know, what is our exposure and we look at other industries. You know, we're not a high hazard industry like oil and gas or mining, but we look at our business units, we have internal manufacturing locations, we have distribution center locations, our own transportation, own internal drivers and then all of our retail and store employees that are out at customer locations and in large customer facilities and we really broke it down to, what is that type of hazard, what are the serious incidents that could occur from that and identified those previous trends, claims, assessments that were completed. And what we developed and identified was there were really four categories that were our highest impact of hazards and that was our forklift operations, powered industrial vehicles, our lockout/tagout operations. So that could be in our manufacturing locations on the equipment or in our distribution centers working on automation or our conveyor systems. And then another one was work at heights, fall protection. And then the fourth one was the trailer securement. So as I talked about, having our own internal trucking system, we have hundreds of people that are inside of trucks unloading them, even checking, verifying quality inspections on those where we put these steps in place and developed detailed training requirements involvement from each level, and we really keyed in on the participation of the employees and to drive those results. Stempak: Hearing you talk about it. I can only imagine the complexity with which it took to get this program up and running and how you had to design it and the framework for all of these different moving parts. So I guess I just want to know how you did it. Like how did you get things organized? How did you roll it out? How did you get buy in? Weaver: That's a great question, Nicole. So something that's a little bit unique about Fastenal and that may resonate with other organizations is part of our culture is what we call a decentralized culture. So the founder of Fastenal had a really strong belief that the person closest to the problem is the best able to fix it and we've always allowed people who are, you know, in the market with the customer right there dealing with the problem to be the one to make some decisions. And that's meant that, you know, people could have their own programs as long as they met standards and things like that. So while we were not only trying to do this relaunch, we were trying to, you know, establish some more structure to some of that culture kind of going forward. So we definitely had a challenge that we knew would be based a lot on, how do we bring leadership on board first. And really it's not necessarily just leadership, but I think anytime you're making a change or you're asking for something in the business as an EHS professional, it's always important to look at your stakeholders and for us we have a lot of different stakeholders, but one of those is definitely our leadership team. And for us, it's always about first developing the strategy and making sure that the strategy is focused on meeting all of those stakeholder needs. And not necessarily just about our personal opinions about how things should run in the EHS field. Because we're always the experts. We always know the most about why things should happen. But it can be sometimes difficult to make sure that we communicate that message and bring people on board. That's buy-in aspect of it that you talked about. And I think for us, what we've learned with this program is that we can take this framework and we can apply it in other areas as well. As long as we always start with what are the stakeholder needs and giving everyone the why. Here's why we are doing what we are doing and why it's important for the business and getting people to see that same picture that you see. What's the desired future state that we're trying to achieve here? And anytime we're implementing a program, making a change, it always starts with leadership and painting that picture and getting everyone to understand the why in that desired future state. So first step is always bringing leadership into the fold and letting them be involved and participate in the process with us and help us make these changes first. It's bringing it down from the top. And then I think from there, there's a few key things that we really did that helped made things successful. You know, after you get leadership involved, do a really good job of making sure that you're tracking and communicating what you're doing and your progress. One thing that I think we do a really good job of internally is telling our story as often as possible. It's really important to make sure that you don't keep things to yourself, keep progress to yourself. Talk to anybody who will listen about your journey and what you're trying to do and what your goals and objectives are. And I think we do a really good job of that. And in doing that, we create a lot of buy in and a lot of champions in areas of the business that you wouldn't necessarily have relied upon, but they always do help move you forward. And by telling that story, everybody knows what you have going on, what our goals and objectives are and everyone is invested and trying to make those same things happen and we know now that applying that same framework, we can apply it to any topic. Anytime we see an area of opportunity in our business to improve, we can take this same framework and apply it and ultimately we always see results. Stempak: That's great to hear. I want to know when you ended this big four journey, or if it sounds like you may have just developed different iterations of it in the years since you launched it. Tucker: Yeah, I think for that and you know to tie into kind of the results also, you know, I don't think it ever stops. We start with the initial implementation and improvement program and identify target areas or audiences that we can improve that piece, but we're always kind of reviewing the process, peeling back the pieces of it and seeing if there's anything missing, getting feedback from external third party auditors that come in and a fresh set of eyes or internal ISO audits that help us, the checks and balances of that. So I don't think that we really ever see a time where it would just stop where it's completely done. There's always opportunity for improvement. Stempak: That's so true. But I do want to jump back to or head to, I guess, the spring of 2021, which is when Fastenal submitted its application to be one of EHS Today's America's Safest Companies. I'm curious to know how you heard about this contest, why you decided that you were ready to enter. You would have had three years of your Big Four journey in place, so it sounds like you were probably starting to see some results from that. Weaver: Definitely. So our team has been participating in EHS Today conferences for a while now, a couple years prior to that. And I think that's what really introduced us to EHS Today and the America's Safest Companies Award. So participating in those events was something that really inspired us by seeing some of these other peers who were at the events, who were winning the awards and were participating. And that was something that was really always a goal for us from the time that we found out about it. And even prior to 2018, kind of like Ryan talked about, we've been on this really important continual improvement journey for 10 plus years now just trying to get to the best level of safety in our business that we can be for our employees. So coming off of that Big 4 implementation, we're seeing really great results with that program, seeing a lot of wins there. We've internally established our ISO 14001and 45001 programs. Just as a whole, our EHS programs were growing and we're really doing better than we ever were. And by continuing to stay connected to those EHS Today events, we were like, hey, we, you know, we feel like we're ready, like we're in the best place we've been in a long time. This award would really mean a lot to us. This is the time for us to go ahead and go after it. Stempak: That's amazing. And it predates my time at EHS Today, but I feel so flattered. Anyway, we at EHS Today agreed, and you were named one of America's Safest Companies in 2021, and I actually wrote that article. There was a lot of great material to choose from because it was very clear that you were indeed ready, but you kind of mentioned this so I'm curious, what did, what did that award mean for Fastenal and its employees? Weaver: The award was really exciting for us and there were really two main things that I think it meant for us. First of all, internally, you know, it allowed us to stop and really celebrate this with our teams and recognize all of the hard work that we've put in and the point that that's brought us to. We're always focused on continual improvement and when, when that exists, it's always important to stop and make sure you celebrate those wins. And the award was a big deal. So we spent like a year celebrating this as much as possible internally, recognizing it with our teams and just making sure that everyone understood the really important role that they all played in winning that award because that's just honestly the case. But also externally for us, it was really important because a lot of people in our industry recognize EHS Today as an important industry partner. So we were also able to let some of our external partners know – our customers and stakeholders – we tell them every chance we get that we were chosen as one of EHS Today's America's Safest Companies and that matters to people. That's something that they ask about. When we have customers to our facilities and they see the banners and the awards and stuff, they always ask about it. So I think for us it was a really good opportunity to recognize how far we've come, but also let our customers and stakeholders know also how far we've come. Stempak: And I know that you haven't stopped there. So what have you been up to the past few years? Tucker: So the past few years, so I'll start with when we received the award in 2021, the following year 2022, we obtained our ISO 14001 environmental and 45001 occupational safety ISO certifications. And then we look back kind of tying into your discussion of, when does the Big Four stop or where is it or are the results where you need it to be? Is it addressing the employees, is it addressing the shareholders, the customers, all the requests, compliance driven? We look at many different KPIs or measurements on that and one of them we look at is our EMRs. Since that 10-year time frame, we've reduced our experience modification rate by 72%. We look at the industry expectations and standards currently today, we're 54% better than the industry standard. But with that, \ what are we doing now or what is our focus? And we kind of talked about the framework and on the occupational health and safety side, we took a lot of those practices from those Big Four programs and one of them I'll touch on is the lockout/tagout piece. And we mentioned, all levels of participation being involved from the employee doing the work, people providing the training. But as we keyed in on that leadership piece, we focused on developing the leadership to be involved. So there are program managers in the process. And another thing we did was really keyed in on communication to employees. And from the Big Four, we've rolled this out to other business units within our operations and that's our coaching and communication piece. So like the lockout/tagout, we have our upper level leadership at the site levels going out and doing lockout/tagout observations to verify. It's not just you met the basic standard, you've completed your training. We make sure that they're involved also in coaching those employees, but we've also rolled that out to our store employees, retail locations and really focused on not just doing a job safety observation, but developing the person doing the observation on how to provide positive feedback, how to provide positive engagement on a safety topic, or also how to redirect an employee to make sure that maybe they have the tools or steps or the knowledge to do that properly. So we really focus on the piece of developing the leadership through the communication in our EHS programs. We talked about the framework and kind of taking that Big Four and rolling it into other programs. One that we just rolled out recently was ergonomics, soft tissue, strain and sprain types of injuries. There's been some state standards that came out that were implemented in the last year, but we took some of the best practices from state regulatory standards and ergonomics and rolled that out and tied it into more like we did with our Big Four programs. And then also we've focused a lot on auto, you know, trucks that we have on the drive from our large semis and DOT, but also down to our pickup trucks of at-fault incidents. What can we control? What behaviors can we approach? I mean the education on the driving and protecting our employees and the public. And then also as we mentioned, you know a lot of ESG sustainability focus throughout our locations and working with our customers and one thing we've implemented is recycling plastics, all the plastic wrap from our pallets and then also bringing it back from our store locations and working with some of our large customers. And earlier this year we just hit over 1,000,000 lbs of plastic wrap that was recycled since that was implemented. Stempak: Wow, that's amazing. I did want to note something because your Safety Leadership Conference presentation description brought up something that I think we talked about or maybe around a bit. So I wanted to get your take. You wrote that EHS success is not obtained by meeting minimum regulatory standards. Why do you think that is or what do you think about the way we talk about minimums, maximums, floors and ceilings when it comes to safety and compliance and excellence and all that? Weaver: That's a great question. And I do want to say first and foremost that we do definitely think that regulatory standards are important, but to us they're guardrails. You know, that's the minimum standards that we want to meet. But Ryan and I have both seen where we can have programs in place that meet regulatory standards, but in a lot of ways still fail the business needs. So I think it's important to make sure that for us especially we always remember that this is the standard, but that's not necessarily where we want to stop. We need to take a second and consider what's best for our employees and that may mean continual improvement. So you may implement a program to meet the minimum standards. But once you identify that that's not successful, that's not where you want to stop. You want to make sure that you're continuing to evaluate and really thinking about what's best for people. And that's something that we've really pushed very hard in our programs is always thinking about the person first. All of the business needs are important, but is this just the best program to help keep our people safe? Are we putting that first and foremost? As I understand, it's really difficult in the regulatory worlds who have regulations that make sense for everyone in the industry. You know, we're dealing with so many different types of businesses and facilities. It's really tough to make sure that regulatory standards make sense for everyone. So I think we all just have to keep in mind that those are minimum standards. That isn't necessarily the world that everyone wants to live in. So we don't want to ignore the regulatory standards, but we just want to make sure that we're living in the world where we're thinking about what's really best for people and pushing ourselves above that if we find our programs aren't successful despite meeting those regulatory standards. And I think that's really what we mean when we say that it's making programs successful – it’s about going above and beyond that when it's needed. Stempak: It's been lovely talking to you! I look forward to seeing you at the Safety Leadership Conference in October and I hope some of our listeners are able to make it to Phoenix as well. Thanks again to our guests Ryan Tucker and Sara Weaver of Fastenal. If you’d like to learn more about their upcoming presentation, go to safetyleadershipconference.com. If you liked this podcast, we encourage you to subscribe to the Great Question wherever you get your podcasts. So for EHS Today, I’m Nicole Stempak! Stay safe, be well, and we hope to see you at Safety Leadership Conference 2025, October 20-22, in Phoenix, Arizona.