You might have noticed that I have not posted a blog in a month or so. I felt that in the new situation we are in with COVID19, the discussion of “world class safety” should be paused for a while. That left, though, a void of what I would discuss. I gave it a month to see how life would change with the new wellness protocols that are in place. The situation put me in a unique position that I now feel is worth discussing.

I currently work for an e-commerce company. With so many people being at home, e-commerce is booming. The company is in an interesting situation in which we need to hire many people across the entirety of the USA all while keeping them safe and well. In the new abnormal of COVID19, there was a needed amount of creativity of how to bring people into the company, meet regulations, and do it on a national scale.

Part of the creativity was the creation of a virtual new hire orientation [VNHO]. From a safety standpoint, it had to be facilitated to allow interaction, questions, and feedback live as part creating a compliant and effective learning experience. Around this same time, I was moved into a new role as a safety liaison for learning, communications, and projects. This began my journey of teaching 12 VNHO classes per week.

When it first began, dedicating 36+ hours a week to repeating the same presentation over and over became disheartening. Over 15 years ago when I first started my journey in safety, annual and new hire safety training was one of my primary items. Since that time, most safety training was delegated or performed by someone else. I was not the primary person for safety-focused training. I was thinking “why me?”. “How is it that after all these years, I am back to where I began. Repeating the same message over and over.”

One morning, I woke to do more training and began the same lament of “why me.” I am still not sure why or how [I have my theories], but my thought changed to “why not me”. That was my breakthrough moment! Who else should be welcoming all these new hires to the organization and prepping them with the knowledge and tools to work safely? I am the one that spent years of my life studying how to make lecture training meaningful to employees. This is exactly where I need to be. It is time to put all that knowledge to work. It is time to use all those theories to make something useful. It is time to do my very best to give these new team members the best learning experience I can provide. Who else would be better equipped with the title, knowledge, and experience other than me? The answer was clear, it was time to put my money where my mouth was, to put the rubber to the road, to pull out all the stops. . . to do my job the best way I know how.

In these strange and trying times, I was fortunate to learn this lesson. It is not “why me”. It is about “why not me”