In this episode, ADJUSTED welcomes Van Langham Direct of Risk Management with Berkley Industrial Comp. Van discusses the 2023 Home Safe for the Holidays Initiative and some of the specific dangers of of Wheels, Gravity, and Complacency.
Season 5 is brought to you by Berkley Industrial Comp. This episode is hosted by Greg Hamlin and guest co-host Mike Gilmartin, Area Vice President, Sales & Distribution, for Key Risk.
Comments and Feedback? Let us know at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/F5GCHWH
Visit the Berkley Industrial Comp blog for more!
Got questions? Send them to marketing@berkindcomp.com
For music inquiries, contact Cameron Runyan at camrunyan9@gmail.com
In this episode, ADJUSTED welcomes Van Langham Direct of Risk Management with Berkley Industrial Comp. Van discusses the 2023 Home Safe for the Holidays Initiative and some of the specific dangers of of Wheels, Gravity, and Complacency.
Season 5 is brought to you by Berkley Industrial Comp. This episode is hosted by Greg Hamlin and guest co-host Mike Gilmartin, Area Vice President, Sales & Distribution, for Key Risk.
Comments and Feedback? Let us know at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/F5GCHWH
Visit the Berkley Industrial Comp blog for more!
Got questions? Send them to marketing@berkindcomp.com
For music inquiries, contact Cameron Runyan at camrunyan9@gmail.com
Hello everybody and welcome to adjust it. I'm your host Greg Hamlin coming at you from beautiful Birmingham, Alabama. And with me is my co host, Mike Gilmartin. Mike, if you want to introduce yourself and say hello to everyone.
Mike Gilmartin:Yeah, absolutely. Hello, everybody. Mike Gilmartin with key risk. I'm sitting here in Greensboro and it is finally follow Greg. So I'm very, very excited.
Greg Hamlin:Same here, all the leaves are turning and you know, the one hard part growing up in the Midwest and moving to the south is August and September, August for sure. It's just like, almost unbearable. But it the falls here just last forever. So I love the fall makes
Mike Gilmartin:up for it, which is very nice. So I'm happy to be here today. Absolutely.
Greg Hamlin:Well, we have our special guests with us. Van Langham van is our Director of Safety, we call it ramp. And we had him on a couple years ago, it's been a while. But every year this time of year, we like to push our program of home safe for the holidays. So we'd like to do an episode on ramp on safety. And the importance of that because obviously if we can prevent injuries from happening, you know, I don't want to be out of a job. But I would like to see less people get hurt. That's for sure. So, van, if you could say hello to everybody and introduce yourself to everybody.
Van Langham:Yeah, well, hello, everyone. As Greg said, I'm van Langham. I'm the Director of Risk Management for our ramp team here at Berkley industrial cop. Celebrating next year will be seven years here. So life was good, still enjoying it. And it's small here in Georgia to in case you're wondering where my accent is from?
Greg Hamlin:Well, same for here. Same for me, van. I'm I just hit my five year, this this month. So it's crazy how time flies. So I know you didn't start out on the insurance end. And you may have shared this before, but it's been several years. Can you talk to us a little bit then about how you ended up at Berkeley industrial competent insurance? Because I know that's not where your background is?
Van Langham:No, Greg, as I've learned after coming to work in the insurance field, most everybody has kind of backed into the insurance side in some way or another. I actually had probably a different path than most people out there. But I didn't go to college till 34. So I spent the first 16 years after high school probably six before man working in the field. Went to college actually got a degree in project management and human resource management because that was what I was passionate about. And that led to roles as HR and safety director at different companies safety was kind of just coming into a focus for everybody at that point. So if they hired an HR manager, they wanted to have the safety manager responsibilities as well. So I did that for several years, and the demand for safety consultation grew. And I had a different perspective because I had actually worked in the shoes of every level from the general laborer up to manager supervisor and different titles. And so I started my own consulting business. And I was working for we were American mining insurance then. But I was working for them as a subcontractor doing inspections and site visits for mining companies because I had a heavy mining background. And that led to the call one day from American mining then Berkley industrial comp now saying, hey, we'd like to talk to you about coming on board full time and the greatest decision I ever made. So I get to do what I love every day, I still work with with insurers across the country, in various industries and get to try to help using my experience to help them improve their workplace safety and protect their workers.
Mike Gilmartin:From mining to insurance might be the biggest jump I've seen of anyone we've talked to, which is really impressive. Those are two very, very different things. But safety I've I have to imagine safety is like the number one thing you have to do as a mining company. So for somebody who doesn't know, being a key wrestler, I'm Another Brooklyn company and we all call our risk management group something different what what does ramp do at bid what is what is the role of the ramp team?
Van Langham:So typically, I think the term that paints a clear picture is we do what most people consider lost control. But we do it differently and that we actually most of our team has actual work experience in the field. And we take that knowledge that experience and merge it into more of a consultative role so that we have consultants not inspectors. So we like to go out and we don't just inspect We try to offer solutions, whether you're a prospect we're looking at or whether you're somebody that we're partnering with or not. We all We'd like to do our best to help. So we we really approach our role is more of a ramp stands for risk assessment, management and prevention. And that's what we do, we try to go out and see a different set of eyes. Because we all know having been in our in our customers shoes that, hey, we need a different set of eyes to point things out, we like to assess the risk, kind of help them learn how to manage it and prevent injuries. So, you know, short term, we're lost control what most people consider that but we're not lost control at all. We're actually consultants.
Greg Hamlin:And that's good. That's great insight. Van, you know, one of the things I've heard from some carriers, obviously, anytime you're writing risks, that's challenging, where there's high risk, mining, explosives, a lot of the stuff we look at, you want to get boots on the ground to take a look at that. But I think a lot of times, and maybe you can speak to this, some of what some of the people who get sent out, come out with a checklist, maybe in a suit suit and a tie, maybe haven't actually worked in that industry. How's your approach different in the marketplace than maybe what some of the other carriers are doing?
Van Langham:Yeah, good question there, Greg. So again, like I said, we I think we have an ingrained sense to and look at things differently than most loss control departments. So, you know, even though OSHA and MC regulations have been around for years, people, you know, trying to be regulatory compliant, we're still losing four to 5000 people a year workers out in the field. So we move beyond that compliance, we move beyond the checklist of are you doing X, X and X, like, you know, we might see a 800 page Safety Manual, doesn't really matter if it's not put into use and has not worked by so we take our experience, and we try to put ourselves in the shoes again, of our customers and say, how can we best benefit you. And it depends on the nature of the person, the organization, but we've we can identify that quickly. But we focus on trying to provide proactive services and resources instead of I think the old mindset of lost control, if somebody gets injured, somebody shows up, they critique my accident investigation, they give me some stuff to talk to my employees about and then I never see them again, until we have another accident. Ramp team is different, we think about how can we get in front of our customers year round. So we've done things like with the help of WR parent company, where we've been able to offer the Risk Management Center to our customers free of charge. And that's a huge benefit, because instead of having to Google for a safety topic, they can they have access to over 200 safety videos in English and Spanish, they can pull up at anytime they can track the training of their workforce, they can assign the training, there's just so much about the Risk Management Center, I could spend this whole hour or however long we have talking about it. But that's one thing we do, we also send monthly safety blast on things that we see as trends in our high hazard industry, clients and world and nationwide too. So we do things like that we do seek the selfie videos where we maybe we've gone out and we've heard about something and we'll say, hey, that'll be a great safety topic. Let's record a video, listen to that all of our insurers and say, hey, get this out in the hands of your management and your supervisory personnel in the field. And let's do your next safety talk for you. So we truly not just we don't try to just be that loss control department, we try to be an extension of their current safety department and serve as a partner. And more importantly, you know, there years past, there was a term that the hurricane was the safety cop. We want to be a resource, we want to be the safety resource. We want our customers to feel comfortable with calling us saying, Hey, Am I doing the right thing here? What can I do better? That's That's our goal is to be that partner that our customers feel comfortable calling when things are bad as well as when they're good.
Mike Gilmartin:Yeah, I think those are all all great points. And I think, you know, I would agree with you, I think in the industry in general, lost control was seen as the Hey, we had an accident, come on, tell us what we did wrong, and what we can do better. But it's always after the fact. And I think there's so much missed on the proactive side of things. And that's where I'm sure your experience and real world experience your team comes into play because you guys know things more than somebody who just read it in a book or went to school for it with no which is great. I'm sure you have a ton of stories and very interesting stories, both from inspections and accident inspections. But can you share maybe one of your more difficult inspections that you've had in your career? Yeah, sure.
Van Langham:You know, for us, when you're in the site to profession, you tend to take things to heart. So when you go on site you feel like you take apart in the worker safety too. So you have this obligation to do the best you can to help protect them. Whether they're your customer or not. At the end of the day, we want people to get home safely but as often Think about one the you know, the first one that comes to mind is several years back, we looked at a prospect roofing contractor. And as I did the research on it, I could tell that they had a lot of trans with OSHA for Fall Protection violations while working on roofs. So I go out, talk to them. And you know, you never know what you're gonna walk into. When you walk out there, you might find somebody that wants to do the right thing. They just don't know how you might find somebody that doesn't want to do the right thing at all, no matter what. And this was that situation. So the owner of the company told me, he said, You know, I went out after this last citation and to abate it about $1,000 worth of these temporary guardrails to put up on our work sites, and he showed me took me to the warehouse showed me all this guard, I said, My gosh, you know, this guard rail, you know, how many crews do you have working out in the field right now? We average eight to 10. All the time, NASA will have much more of this, do you have? Oh, no, this is all of it. And I said, so all of the fall protection equipment that you bought is in the warehouse on the shale. But your crews are out working in the field steel? Well, they wouldn't use it anyway. So and he kind of added a few explosives in there. But he said they wouldn't use it if I sent it out there. So there's no point in sending it out there. And I was thinking, well, how are you protecting your workers while they're out there in the fall protection is in here? And there was no good answer. It was just one of those, I just did it to abate the OSHA citation. So that's an example of the tough ones. But ultimately, what's tough about it is the fact that the mindset is still there in some places, and the workers are still exposed. And that's the tough part when you walk away. Because, you know, obviously, it's probably not a good fit for us, because we want somebody that's gonna allow us to partner with them. But that's the tough side is when you leave there knowing that people are still exposed to hazards like that.
Greg Hamlin:I couldn't agree more. And one of the things I've learned from you van over time, it's just how important the mindset is. You talked about that, to building a safety culture that it really, it takes a lot of dedication and commitment when you're working with insured's. What do you like to see like, if you're like, Okay, this is a good rest, they're doing things the right way? Maybe not? Everything's perfect. But there's, there's some good signs there. What do you like?
Van Langham:Well, you know, when we go out a lot of things, I mentioned the 800 page Safety Manual earlier. You know, that's, that's all well and good. But what we like to see when we go out is employers that value their employees, and they almost get the fact that regulations and compliance don't save lives, employees save lives. So employees out there buying in different levels, taking responsibility for themselves and others, is what we like to see. And you can see that when you walk around in the field, you can see it when you talk to management about how they approach it. Are they talking about their people more? Or are they talking about, you know, their compliance and their training more? When we walk around? How's the engagement between the people we're walking around with and the employees in the field, because that tells you everything? If there's an open communication line out in the field, then it's probably not just today, while we're on site, it's a culture of open communication. So, to me, I think the most important thing we like to see is that engagement interaction. You know, of course, we like to see the employees working safely. But it's that engagement, that interaction and the fact that they've truly value their employees enough to do the right buying.
Mike Gilmartin:Yeah, I think, you know, it's you said something earlier, and I completely agree with it, some, some people want to do the right thing, and just don't know how. And I think that all goes into a culture, right? If you care about your employees, and you care about their well being and you realize that your employees are really what makes your business and it's your job to keep them safe. You may not know how to do that. And you may not have all the tools, but the mindset is there. And I think we're similar at key risk, where you know, we'll work with the high mod company who maybe has some bad losses, but really wants to do the right thing, right? Like, you can't change somebody's mind. Like your example earlier. He just doesn't want to do the right thing. That's just kind of who they are as a person. But it's one of those things where there's always room for improvement, as long as you're willing to get there and do the right thing. And you talk a lot about safety culture, which I think is true. I think it's completely a culture that starts from the top. What are some of the things when you're going out and doing on your inspections and you sit down with different people? What are some of the things you see that really hurt a safety culture or kind of get in the way of having a solid safety culture in a company?
Van Langham:Yeah, I think, great question. I think it's important to kind of start off with a definition of a safety culture because I think people kind of get confused on that like what is the safety culture and essentially a safety culture is a product of the employees perception of what the employee expects from them from a safety standpoint. Alright, so what can I get away with as far as unsafe actions and what's expected and won't be, you know, from a sleep perspective. So some of the things that actually hurt safety culture is number one, management or people think it's too difficult to, to really enhance their safety culture. And that's where my experience again comes in. Because I spent decades, literally building and enhancing safety culture. So I've shared with them what I learned in regardless of the industry, the steps are all the same. It's kind of funny how management has to be committed at the top. The first people that buy in once you truly engage is your first tier employees. And then it kind of sandwiches in the Midlands, supervisors and managers, I mean, because everybody thinks it's too difficult, right, except the employees who think that it's not expected from them. So once the commitment is there, it really starts changing. And I've always said, it takes about three years to truly change the safety culture, continuous commitment, non wavering steadfastness, but you start seeing the changes early on. And that's the fun part. You know, that's when you start realizing, hey, this isn't that difficult. But to do it, some of the things you have to do is, you know, the problems is we might not have the empathy and the organization that we need, we might not truly value our employees, we have to have the mindset that I want every one of our employee or our employees to go home every day and enjoy whatever their hobbies or their family. That's the mindset we have to have. And then that leads to the dedication to do what needs to be done. And it doesn't have to be expensive. That's what most people think, because it costs money. It costs a little money, but by the time you figure injury calls, lost production, filling in and training new people, is well worth the investment to keep people you know, say from a financial perspective, if nothing else, some of the other things I see is inconsistent use of disciplinary action, maybe we like this person that just broke a safety rule. So we don't do anything, but then we don't let this other person because they're late three days a week. So we're going to treat them differently. Well, that sends a message that everybody's not valued the same. Not acknowledging one of the key things that I've tried to kind of press on everybody or encourage them to do is when you walk around in the field, if you're a manager or supervisor, and you see somebody doing something, right, take just 30 seconds to stop and say, hey, great work, I really appreciate you having this respirator on. While you're doing this, when you normally don't wear it every day, acknowledging that people around you see it, not just the person you're acknowledging, but the co workers around them see that. And that says the message that this is real, we not only, you know, discipline you when you do something wrong, because we care, we appreciate you when you do it right. And then not expect not kind of communicating. This is a big one, I think, especially in the last few years with the turnover rates, we tend to think that we hire experienced people, and we do but with that experience in the trade comes experience and other cultures. So not communicating with new hires, what your safety culture expectations are, those are the things that can really hurt the building of a safety culture. So if you're trying to build one, and you bring people in, if you don't train them to be in the same culture, then they're going to bring in their past culture experience with them, which can kind of hurt your, your efforts. And then lastly, if you've got a great safety culture in place, don't ever think we've made it. And we're good. So we can get a status quo. Now you never make it to the top of that mountain, it gets a little steeper gets a little easier. But you've never really made it this continuous effort going forward.
Greg Hamlin:Those are those are really good points, man. And I think you hit on so many things that hopefully our listeners can, can take and add to what they're trying to accomplish. I can remember. And this isn't with a prior carrier at a different time in my life years and years ago. But sometimes companies come up with these ideas to have a safety culture and they backfire. And I can I can think of one example, this was a tree cutting company years ago. And they their team if they didn't have any injuries would get a bonus every month. And so this guy literally chained sod his arm off, and the manager took them to the ER and dropped him off and said you're gonna have to take care of this on your own because we don't want the team losing our safety bonus. So like the idea was good, but how it actually implement was implemented was actually not causing necessarily safe actions. Maybe it has some impact, but there were some issues with reporting injuries because of the way that bonus system was set up. Have you seen stuff like that man where maybe that that the thought was good, but then how it got implemented cause some additional problems.
Van Langham:I have and you know, it happens more times than not so If you do a lot of training on behavior based and the newest thing is human organizational performance behaviors, and designing your systems around human behaviors, but you see that a good bet, I think what most people don't realize, Greg is that every organization has a safety culture. It's just what stage a UN is what you have to identify and figure out how do I enhance from there or go forward, like you said, the intent to do right and maybe there. But you have to realize then that that particular organization you just gave an example of is in the very first stage of the safety culture, which is basically regulatory compliant. Let's don't report things, let's hide on let's let's be compliant as best we can. And it's all about being reactive in your approach. So something has happened. Now, how do we handle it, hence, we might try to hide it, we might try to get away with it. But we really don't do any put any corrective actions in place to make sure it doesn't happen again. So in my training, I'll talk about the different stages. So that would be the first stage. The second stage would be, you know, as rule or policy base, and now you're maybe you're tired of your maybe your contract or in your TR IR or your EMR, total recordable incident rate or your experience modification rating is too high, and you can't get work. So now you put these rules and policies in place to make everybody make all your employees comply with your rules and your policies. And your employees go from thinking in the first day, just hey, what we do is dangerous, we're going to be injured accidents happen. In this stage, you kind of start thinking, Well, I better follow the rules when I see my supervisor and manager because I don't want to be sent home for three days, or I don't want to be terminated or something like that. But the key is when I see my supervisor or manager, the third stage is when employees at all levels begin to buy in. They're like, Hey, I think there's something to this, I think I'm on, I'm gonna do the right thing so that I don't get injured, I'm gonna follow the rules, I'm gonna do what I need to so I don't get injured. And then in the fourth stage is more of employee ownership. So now we're thinking more along the lines of if I see Greg or Mike doing something wrong, vans gonna stop and say, Hey, Greg, Mike, your, do you realize you're doing something here, that's not, that's not safe. And that's something that we've learned early on. Because as you as you get focused on doing your task, you forget about your surroundings, which are constantly changing in most industries, but other people around, you can stop and say, hey, the environment has changed, or what you're doing is changed. And this is no longer safe. So that's when employees have that feeling of, hey, I'm gonna do my parts and nobody gets injured. So I think the key is figuring out what stage of the safety culture you're in which the example you gave, I would suggest there in the very first stage, and, and trying to make the right approaches or the might the right changes to take you to the next level. And the next and the next. And like I said, that's when it gets fun is when you start going back saying, Hey, we made it from stage one, not quite stage, they were on our way. Now, you know, this wasn't that hard. So it's, it's kind of fun to watch that unfold. But that's, I think that's the one thing that people don't really realize is there is a safety culture in every organization. Remember, it's those beliefs that the employees have what's expected from them?
Mike Gilmartin:Yeah, it's interesting. You know, it's you said something earlier, and I don't remember if we were recording it or not, but it's either you're going to do the work upfront, or you're going to do the work later. And that's true for everything. Greg and I have talked on this podcast probably 500 times, especially on the claim side, it's harder and more work to do the right thing. And to develop a good relationship and have empathy and do all those things up front, it is harder to do, right? It's easier just to call somebody and say, Hey, I need a few minutes from you. Great, thanks, bye. But you will save time down the line and you will get such a better result. If you put the work in upfront. You said something earlier, that was interesting. You know, you can have a company that has a great safety culture, and maybe they're at stage four, and things are going well. But it's easy to get complacent. It's easy to just kind of say, Okay, we're great at this, and then all sudden, maybe you're not as good at it. How are some of the companies you work with that continually sustain that good culture? What are what are things they do to keep? I'm gonna say motivated, but how do they keep it top of mind to be able to stay successful? Because your point is, you put in the work to get there. But then how do you maintain it?
Van Langham:Well, it all goes back to that what I talked about earlier, the frequent state to communications and all levels. So some companies have safety committees, where they they meet once a month, they you know, they bring things up that they've seen through their walkthrough sites, and they'll bring it back up and then they follow through with training on all employees. So I think the key is constant and never ending communication about safety and make it a complete, you know, complete feedback, a complete loop. So if you see something, do something about it, share that with employees, again, the stopping a worker to say hey, great job I'm doing well. what you're doing, that feeds not only that worker, but the people around them. Now the sudden I want to get a pat on the back, I want to do the right thing, I want to get that acknowledgement I want to be noticed. So it's just really, it's that dedication, I think the root of it all is learning how to value your employees. If you value your employees, you truly look at them differently than you do if you see them as more of a resource to a task, or a revenue stream or something like that. It's really, it's a person that you're working with, and they have a family that depends on them when they get home. And I think if you can change your mindset to that the rest of it comes easy. Then you figure out what your path is to enhancing your culture and never letting it go away. Yeah,
Mike Gilmartin:it's amazing how similar that is to I think Greg would agree that claim side of things where it's easy to make it transactional, and just see them as an injured worker and move on, it's a lot harder to see them as somebody with a family or with children or somebody that viewpoint has hobbies outside of work and needs to pay their mortgage and needs to buy food. And when you really put yourself in their shoes and actually see them as that versus just an injured employee you're having a transaction with the difference is unbelievable, and how that outcome happens in the relationship that you can build. I don't know Greg, if you have thoughts on that, but it's that's it's very similar, right? And both and I find that fascinating.
Van Langham:And, you know, we have to remember we have to I'm sorry, gray, but we have to remember this is you know, sometimes you have these conversations where people blame the injured worker for what happened. And whether it's the fault doesn't matter. We have to realize that nobody comes to work, say and today was a great day to break my arm. Nobody comes to work thinking that way. So we have to figure out a way to make it to where they don't break their arm because they don't want to. How can we help you and your goal of getting home safely today? Yeah, no
Mike Gilmartin:one says it'd be awesome to get injured today. That was
Greg Hamlin:your, your spot on and I know van one of the things we've really focused on the last few years is having this initiative for Berkeley industrial cops home safe for the holidays, you know, a lot I always tell people are are the companies we insure are really the companies that build America. And these guys are, they're working on cell phone towers, they're out there, building things and doing still erection, they are underground and mines, providing the energy that allows us to do the things we want to do. And so getting home to spend that time with the people they love, which is going to happen here, hopefully over the next six to eight weeks with Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's coming up. Talk to us a little bit about that initiative and why you why we've done that and what you guys are providing this year for your home safe for the holidays.
Van Langham:Yeah, great. Thanks for asking about that, Greg. So again, as as people who have been in the shoes of our customers and our customers employees, we realize that certain times of the year can prove more difficult to work safely. And cost during the holiday season. Think about all the competing factors you had you have pretty much every sport out there is coming down to the championship. The playoffs, the pennant race, college football is coming into the national units is everything is enhancing increasing during that time. That can be a distraction, Christmas parties, holiday, you know Halloween parties, Thanksgiving, get togethers. All of these things can lead to competition for employees mindset, what are they thinking about right now, a lot of things people don't realize is it tends to lead to rushing more often than not, because now we want to get we want to make sure we get off in time to make it to this party or this game or this, whatever function we have. So as I mentioned earlier, we do monthly safety blasts with all of our customers focused on targeted topics. We wrap that up during I didn't mean to use that term rant. But that's pretty appropriate. The rant team wraps that up during the holiday season. And we start around mid October and go through the end of the year. And we focus on three areas primarily wheels, gravity and complacency. And the reason we focus on those is in our industry and really nationwide. That's where most of the serious and catastrophic injuries occurs in these three categories. We've targeted these for the last several years now this year, we've actually started digging down a little bit, if you will, into how can we be more specific on based on statistics of where we actually see a fall injury. So for wheels, we were targeting three areas, tire blowouts, you know, tires blowing out on trucks, causing rigs, turnovers in mind sites off road construction, getting off and own trucks, so climbing up and down ladders, sport lifts, things like that. And then operating tanker trucks turnovers driving too fast not wearing see belts, you know, things like that gravity were really fought, we're really focusing on ladder use, because that's where we've seen a lot of ladder trends, you know, a lot of falls from ladders this year. And then complacency is one that most people kind of wonder well, how does that affect it will complacency is really what led to the start of the HomeSafe of the holidays campaign, because people are distracted, or maybe they've been doing a job so long. They're so used to it, they forget about the hazards. And I will share one example of a company that I worked with one time, hired a person to be a roofer. And the first day on the job, they couldn't climb halfway up a 40 foot extension ladder. So I was a volunteer firefighter, firefighter growing up. So I climb up the ladder, use my skills, get them down, put them on the ground work, and we'll six months later, I went to the same site, the same person was hanging off the edge of the room, 40 foot in the air with no fall protection on a waist up hanging off the edge of the roof. So I go up and I say, Hey, can I ask you a question? How is it just a few months ago, you couldn't even click on this height. And now you're up, you're hanging off the edge of the roof. And he said, Well, he said, I'll tell you what she worked up here a few weeks, it's like working at ground level. That's a perfect example of complacency. When we start something and we know is dangerous, our guard goes up. But after we do it so long, and we don't get injured, our guard starts going down. So we focus on complacency a lot throughout the year to just because it's that mindset. And the best way to fight that complacency is and I know I've said it a dozen times, frequent safety, communication, constantly talking about the hazards in the work environment working safely around them. So that's kind of the whole point behind the home safe for the holidays campaign is let's get out every two weeks instead of every month, and provide information that our that our customers can take and deliver to their employees post around job sites. Just make people aware that hey, don't be you're not coming to work distracted or are caught off guard by something. Let's remain focused do this because as we all know, we tend to see statistics go up through the holidays with workplace injuries.
Greg Hamlin:Great points. I'm glad you hit on hit on that. And I want to just check in so for those who may not be our customers today, but maybe somewhere down the line. They're interested in partnering with us. Where else can they find these things? Do you share them on LinkedIn as their as their information they can get there?
Van Langham:We do. I mean, I mentioned earlier doing the selfie videos, safety videos, we put those on our YouTube channel, you can meet Durant team on the YouTube channel, you can find out more about Berkeley industrial comp on the YouTube channel. But yeah, we make them accessible our website, we have a lot of resources out there available for people to access. Again, it goes back to we want to take care of our customers. But at the same time, we want to do our best to protect employee employees and workers everywhere. So we try not to have those and lock them up so that people don't have access to it.
Greg Hamlin:I appreciate that man. I know from my point of view, having worked through several different carriers, I really do think our ranch team, our safety team has a special team and you guys do such a nice job and have so much real world experience on how to how to practically practically practically implement safety policies and culture. So I would just encourage anybody listening who's interested to reach out to Van you can reach out to him on LinkedIn. Same same for any of the other members of the team. I think we had several on last year. So thank you so much for your time I want it to end this season. One of the things that we're trying to do is I just tried really hard the world's got so much negativity out there right now I feel like every time you turn on TV it's like there's another war and other shooting and other crazy thing that's happened so my my little piece is we're gonna put something positive out there every every episode so so for van for you. What's something that makes you smile doesn't have to be work related, but it can be but something that when you think about it, it just makes you happy? Well,
Van Langham:I'll tell you Greg, it's I'll think about this and bear with me for a minute because I've never been one that like what's your favorite? What's your about there's always kind of changes but I think about three things First, my family you know my family makes me smile. I'm very proud of them. I just I could go on and on about my family. Second is when I think about our customers and when I have a chance to train somebody that thinks something's impossible and then all of a sudden you say something in the eyes light a light in the light just went on and they realize hey, we're not doing we can change this we can get better. But I have to say gray probably the thing that I share with everybody every chance I get is not Berkeley industrial account family. We have something here that is truly unique. I knew it When I came over, we were talking earlier about our interviews when we came on board. Within 10 minutes, I felt like I was at a family reunion. It's just the atmosphere here is phenomenal. And the fact that everyone, everybody at our company cares about our customers, whether it's agency partners, our policyholders insured's, the ramp team wants to build trustworthy relationships so that we can help protect workers. The resolution team cares about taking care of the injured workers. I mean, they truly do. We really are living by the WR Berkley statement of everything counts, and every one matters. And that's what I that's what makes me smile the most is when I have an opportunity to interact like this or my bitten by Berkeley industrial count family. Definitely. I mean, that's something that makes me smile every morning when I get up and log on my computer.
Greg Hamlin:Hey, I couldn't agree more. I know from my perspective, I've been here five years now, like I said, and at the time that I was interviewing for this, there were a couple of opportunities that I was looking into. And I remember meeting our former president Chan and interviewing and meeting the leadership staff. And I said, I told my wife, I said, this is the kind of people I want to work with. And she said, Well, there's this other company that's pretty, you know, pretty well known, that would be pretty exciting. And you know, coals tough, you've done cold before. And that's really the path you want to go and I said, You know what, doing hard things with great people I can do all day long. And, and so I know our everyday is tough. We write high hazard workers comp, we see tough losses. But we're solving problems for people that really need those solved, and we work with a great team. So thanks for bringing that up. You're making me smile. There's my positive positive on this. And I know Mike feels the same way about his key risk family. So they're, they're a good crew over there.
Mike Gilmartin:I do. Yeah, we I don't know. I think all broken companies seem fairly similar. Man. I, when I flew down I interview is like six hours interviews. I'm pretty sure I called my wife after we looked. He's the happiest person on earth. And this is the greatest place ever. And it's been seven years in November, and I wouldn't look back. It's been fantastic. And it is all about the people you work with, though, as something about the smaller companies, the family atmosphere, it just it just makes a difference, regardless.
Van Langham:absolutely does.
Greg Hamlin:Well, I appreciate you, man. Thanks, Mike, for joining us on this one. And just remind our folks to do right think differently. And don't forget to care. And as always, we release on Mondays every other Monday. So hope you will continue to follow us and like us. Give us a five star rating if you get a chance. It's always good to get some comments out there so that other people can see what we're doing. And with that, be safe. Thanks, everybody.