In today’s episode, I chat with Candace DiCresce, the Senior Director of Safety & Accessibility at Rogers Communications, where she leads a talented team that is driven by a passion for supporting employee safety and well-being.
Candace has over 25 years of experience in occupational health and safety, wellness and well-being, working in consulting with Deloitte, industry at MDS, and the public sector with the Toronto Transit Commission.
Her broad view afforded some incredible insights as we discussed her experiences at Rogers, where her team led the strategic integration of safety, disability management, mental health, wellness, accessibility and accommodation into a holistic function that protects and enriches employee physical and mental well-being.
The walls between work and life have crumbled down. And professionals like Candace ensure what remains is a workplace we all can be proud of.
Candace DiCresce
Candace DiCresce is the Senior Director of Safety & Accessibility at Rogers Communications, where she leads a talented team that is driven by a passion for supporting our employees’ safety and well-being at work and throughout their lives, and for removing barriers.
Candace has over 25 years of experience in safety, well-being, environmental and sustainability problem-solving, working in consulting, industry, and the public sector including at Deloitte, MDS (a global life sciences company), and the Toronto Transit Commission.
At Rogers, she drove strategic integration of safety, disability management, mental health, wellness, accessibility and accommodation into a holistic function that protects and enriches employee physical and mental well-being. She is honoured to serve on the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety’s Council of Governors. In 2018, she was recognized as an Innovator in Workplace Mental Health by DiversityCan Magazine.
Candace holds a B.A.Sc. in civil engineering from the University of Toronto, is a proud professional engineer, and is the grateful mother to two weird and wonderful teens.
Thinking Inside the Box
Constraints drive innovation. We tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture. And if you enjoy the work we’re doing here, consider giving us a 5-star rating, leaving a comment & subscribing. It ensures you get updated whenever we release new content & really helps amplify our message.
Matt
Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.
In today’s episode, I chat with Candace DiCresce, the Senior Director of Safety & Accessibility at Rogers Communications, where she leads a talented team that is driven by a passion for supporting employee safety and well-being.
Candace has over 25 years of experience in occupational health and safety, wellness and well-being, working in consulting with Deloitte, industry at MDS, and the public sector with the Toronto Transit Commission.
Her broad view afforded some incredible insights as we discussed her experiences at Rogers, where her team led the strategic integration of safety, disability management, mental health, wellness, accessibility and accommodation into a holistic function that protects and enriches employee physical and mental well-being.
The walls between work and life have crumbled down. And professionals like Candace ensure what remains is a workplace we all can be proud of.
Candace DiCresce
Candace DiCresce is the Senior Director of Safety & Accessibility at Rogers Communications, where she leads a talented team that is driven by a passion for supporting our employees’ safety and well-being at work and throughout their lives, and for removing barriers.
Candace has over 25 years of experience in safety, well-being, environmental and sustainability problem-solving, working in consulting, industry, and the public sector including at Deloitte, MDS (a global life sciences company), and the Toronto Transit Commission.
At Rogers, she drove strategic integration of safety, disability management, mental health, wellness, accessibility and accommodation into a holistic function that protects and enriches employee physical and mental well-being. She is honoured to serve on the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety’s Council of Governors. In 2018, she was recognized as an Innovator in Workplace Mental Health by DiversityCan Magazine.
Candace holds a B.A.Sc. in civil engineering from the University of Toronto, is a proud professional engineer, and is the grateful mother to two weird and wonderful teens.
Thinking Inside the Box
Constraints drive innovation. We tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture. And if you enjoy the work we’re doing here, consider giving us a 5-star rating, leaving a comment & subscribing. It ensures you get updated whenever we release new content & really helps amplify our message.
Matt
Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.
Candace D.: Preventing those fires is clearly a much more powerful tool than training people in how to use extinguishers. And however you want to extend that metaphor, and I extend it across, by the way, the spectrum of safety into well being into accessibility. And this is why we embarked on a journey to integrate functions into one and found that power there.
Matt Burns: Missing someone. Constraints Drive Innovation Hey Everyone, it's Matt here for another episode of Thinking Inside the Box, a show where we discuss the innovative ways organizations and their leaders.
Matt Burns: Overcome complex issues at work.
Matt Burns: If you're interested in checking out our other content, you can find us at our shiny new website, insideTheboxpodcast.com and on all of your favorite podcast platforms by searching thinking inside the box. And if you enjoy the work we're doing here, consider leaving us a five.
Matt Burns: Star rating, a comment and subscribing it.
Matt Burns: Ensures you get updated whenever we release new content and really helps amplify our message.
Matt Burns: In today's episode, I chat with Candice Duscasi, the senior director of safety and accessibility at Rogers Communication, where she leads.
Matt Burns: A talented team that is driven by.
Matt Burns: A passion for supporting employee safety and well being.
Matt Burns: Candace has over 25 years of experience.
Matt Burns: In occupational health and safety wellness well being and has worked with consulting firms like Deloitte for Industry at MDS and in the public sector with the Toronto Transit Commission.
Matt Burns: Her broad view across multiple sectors afforded some incredible insights as we discussed her experiences at Rogers, where her team led the strategic integration of safety, disability management, mental health, wellness, accessibility and accommodation into a holistic function that protects and enriches.
Matt Burns: Employee physical and mental well being.
Matt Burns: The walls between work and life have come crumbling down, and it's professionals like Candice that help us ensure that what remains is a workplace we can all be proud of. She was kind enough to stop by.
Matt Burns: Let me pick her brain, and I.
Matt Burns: Hope you enjoy the conversation as much.
Matt Burns: As I did recording it. And now I bring you Candice Di Cose, a good place to start a conversation.
Matt Burns: Candice, how are you?
Candace D.: I'm great, Matt. How are you?
Matt Burns: I'm doing really well.
Matt Burns: I'm looking forward to this chat.
Matt Burns: Uh, before we get into it, let's learn a bit more about your background, your experiences, and what's brought you to today.
Candace D.: That sounds great, Matt. I'm happy to. You know, I can give you the CV rundown that talks about where I came from, my background as an engineer, and, uh, that was my training, pursued that in my career for some years in consulting. I've had experience in consulting in the public sector, in the private sector, global national roles, hyper, uh, local in one city. But really what unifies my experience is that there's always a combination of technical skill with really that focus on helping people, improving in some kind of way the world through environmental work. In the environmental field, obviously, the health, safety, well being, mental health, accessibility fields, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, and that kind of thing. And I would say that comes from my background, my family background, sort of the existential where did I come from? Question where in my large family I played the role of unifier, kind of the bringer together of the family. It was a combined family, and I was that first child in the new family. And I would say that really informed who I am as a professional, as a connector of people, a bringer together of parts, uh, into the whole. And sometimes I do that. Well, sometimes, um, I may struggle. Um, but that's really, I think, what drives me. And that red thread through my experience.
Matt Burns: Well, it makes sense, because when we.
Matt Burns: Step back and look at your experiences, and in particular the ones that involve transformative change, and there's a lot of those in the course of your career. And when I look at transformative change, I always think about building alliances and partnerships and how transformative change is, frankly, is not possible unless you have really good partnerships with you along the way. I'm just curious, with your background, your experiences, how have you approached building alliances to drive transformational change in organizations?
Candace D.: I couldn't agree more with you on that, Matt. I'm an influencer without authority. And I would know in different times in my career, maybe first couple of years of this decade, maybe my authority meter has gone up as I've had to kind of step in with more authority in different emergencies and things in my, uh, experience. But generally speaking, as are many people in a shared services, support services role, I'm an influencer without authority. And the only way to get things done is to influence people who do have the authority to take action and to band together with other influencers to get things done. I would say that there are a few philosophies that I draw upon regularly to help me with that, how I build those alliances to drive that change.
And the first one I think about is what I think of as, uh, look before you leap. So I'm naturally an observer, and I really, really lean into getting a lay of the land before I open my big mouth and stick my foot inside of it. And so, as an example, when I started at Rogers, I took about six months doing a big tour of our leaders and influencers in the organization to really understand who they are, the role they play, the interactions they have with others in the organization, and what they've learned about navigating the organization that I could take on. And I apply that on a more micro scale. In most of the situations that I'm in, when I'm really thinking about how to do things the best way that I
can, that's the way that I approach things, and that helps me understand, really put myself in the shoes of those folks and understand what motivates them, because influencing means helping, uh, others to not just do what it is you're asking them to do, but to buy into it. And that's when we know it becomes successful. So if they're going to buy in, I need to know who they are and how they connect with whom, et cetera. So by developing that baseline understanding of those others, the situations, the reporting relationships, and so forth, that's what I think of as really that look before you leap. The second philosophy I think about is staying curious. So, in a role where you're really focused on trying to get people to take things slower, spend more money, work against their instincts of how they might want to work, uh, specifically, when I think about working more safely, it's kind of counterintuitive. We want to take the shortest cut possible, as an example, and I'm trying to influence people to make different decisions. I get lots of no. And many of us in, again, those support roles get lots of no, no. I don't think we should do it. We shouldn't do it that way. We can't do it on that timetable. Uh, that sounds fine, but not for me. And I think early in my career, admittedly, I might have taken those things personally. And the way that I overcame that, first of all, that hurt of taking those things personally and getting to the other side of really understanding how to influence others was to really stay curious. What's driving that? No. What are they really saying when they say no? How can we step these things back to a place where we can commonly understand each other and agree to some objective, some common platform so we can take it forward with curious questions that, um, are going to get us to a common understanding of what we need to accomplish? Maybe I was leaping forward into a how that wasn't going to work for them. I think that staying curious protects me from taking things personally, and it also makes the other person feel heard and valued and a part of the process. And that's a very powerful approach that I would say one of the key topics in my mentorship discussions with folks that I've worked with over the years, a couple of others are really what I think of as plagiarism being the
sincerest form of flattery. So when there are communication channels in the organization that work well, when there are training programs or coaching programs or leadership programs or real or virtual water cooler type of environments that people go to for information, linking into those pieces that work rather than recreating them is absolutely the best way to create those sustainable messaging, those sustainable programs that are messaged. It's generally communication oriented that, um, those tend to work, but it's multifaceted. And when you can find those folks that are running something that runs really well, that's ideally sort of a part of how things work around here in organizations. Going to the people who own those things and treating them with that curiosity and that respect and understanding their motivations really strengthens the programs and the relationships and the outcomes. And lastly, not to be forgotten is that everyone on the team plays a role. So it's really all for one. And the members of my team are not trading entirely on my credibility, they're building their own. They're adding to the collective credibility of our team. When we go forward and build those strategic relationships together, and we hand them off to each other and we build them together and we contribute together to the building of those positive relationships and alliances, you end up with one plus one is three situations.
Matt Burns: I think it comes back to your earlier point around influence that authority, and.
Matt Burns: It'S a challenging role.
Matt Burns: And I have a soft spot for discussion, because off and on throughout my career, I would be associated with these professions being an HR. I mean, at some points actually, these professions reported up into me in smaller.
Matt Burns: Organizations, and I always had this duality.
Matt Burns: Of thinking which, and you've alluded to it.
Matt Burns: On one hand, we know that working in a safe, healthy way that is.
Matt Burns: Intentional for the health and safety of everybody involved, the customer, the employee, the.
Matt Burns: Partner, all the above is in everyone's best interest. And no one disputes that.
Matt Burns: And no one likes to see examples of situations where we fell short on that. Whether it's an accident, an injury, or even a near miss, in some cases.
Matt Burns: Those things can be pretty traumatic.
Matt Burns: And organizations work really hard to make.
Matt Burns: Sure those things don't happen.
Matt Burns: And at the same time, it always feels like you're trying to push a rope up a hill when it comes to health and safety. Because to your point, despite us all.
Matt Burns: Knowing, this pushback is part of the diet.
Matt Burns: And whether it's time or resources or money or sequencing or any of the
number of other issues that come up.
Matt Burns: And pop up that may or may not be valid.
Matt Burns: It really does take somebody who can, to your earlier point, remove the ego from the conversation and understand that even though your heart's in the right place, as the conduit, as the professional, as.
Matt Burns: The consultant, as the leader, in this case, you have to take the individual.
Matt Burns: With where they are on that journey with you to get to the place where you both want to arrive. And that's why transformation is really, really hard, because most people who are further down that path get frustrated and go, why aren't you here? And then they resort to actions that may or may not be aligned with moving somebody closer to them.
Matt Burns: And I get it.
Matt Burns: Some decisions, especially involving health and safety, can involve building through consensus. If there's a fire drill, you don't want to build through consensus. This is time for directive. But when it comes to transformative change, there is an understanding that there's risk.
Matt Burns: Involved in that change.
Matt Burns: I also think it's incumbent upon organizations to understand that there's risk involved with current state as well, because the world around us is also changing and
expectations are changing and risks are changing, and the conditions in which we operate are changing.
Matt Burns: So that presents new opportunities.
Matt Burns: It also presents new challenges.
Matt Burns: When I think about how this conversation.
Matt Burns: Has evolved, one area that in particular.
Matt Burns: I look at and go, wow, has.
Matt Burns: Technology really transformed this particular area? Because traDitionally, this would have been more of a tangible conversation. We're talking about humans, we're talking about health and safety, we're talking about incidences and accidents and wellness, and a lot.
Matt Burns: Of tangible things that we can measure.
Matt Burns: And at the same time, a lot.
Matt Burns: Of that was manual or it was.
Matt Burns: Relied upon or was not treated with the same level of urgency in order to put technology as a support mechanism behind it.
Matt Burns: But now we have claims management solutions.
Matt Burns: And we have wellness platforms and recognition platforms and engagement platforms, and all these incredible tools that we can use to interact with and engage with our employees, regardless of where they are, where they're working, when they're working, how they're working.
Matt Burns: I'm curious, from your vantage point, when you look at the last, let's call it ten years, how have you seen technology transform your work in that time?
Candace D.: Well, I mean, to your point, Matt, what hasn't technology transformed in that time? Right. And the acceleration of technology can be dizzying. I would say that in the spaces in which I work, the safety well being, accessibility, disability management spaces, um, that I've been playing in in my career. There's almost a new solution presented and thrown at you a week. Truly, I think about what can technology do for us? What do we need from it? You can get really jazzed about all the sciency things that technology can do to add a little bit more knowledge about some specific things or big knowledge about big things. But as with any technology, before you leap headlong into it, you really need to understand what you're trying to accomplish. Certainly there are data systems, systems for tracking information and for tracking closure of corrective actions and audits, and managing all the data and information that we absolutely need to have, keep track of, monitor use to measure our, um, success. But what really has made an impact are those pieces of technology that we use to create a more personal, human centric experience and things that work with what we're trying to do, as opposed to change what it is that our values and our beliefs tell us that we need to do. So, as an example, the obvious one, virtual meetings, I want to say generation, I'm not trying to coin something here, but the massive transformation that happened to us in this
decade. Obviously virtual meetings were happening before that, but certainly our use of those things has changed in the past, um, several years, a couple of years, this decade, really. And I think, not to sort of trod on that well worn territory, but it has been incredibly transformational and I think about its impact on our ability to deliver my kinds of services. So, thinking about accessibility, virtual meetings allow us, and particularly the platforms we use in my Organization, which are the Microsoft platforms, they have accessibility features that we've never had access to before. That really that theme of leveling the playing field comes to mind when I think about accessibility, because we have things like closed captioning, um, we have ways of accessing conversations through these virtual meeting platforms that we didn't have before. For people who find it challenging because of accessibility or accommodation, needs to be in physical rooms all the time. When we're all in a virtual room, that person is again on a level playing field with others. From a safety perspective, one Hindrance to being able to deliver effective training on a timely basis or checking our skills when it comes to safety can be the time, the cost, the effort of actually heading out to be in the field with that technician as an example, to observe how they're doing their work, to look at a person's home set up for ergonomic safety. And obviously these platforms permit us to do things that we couldn't have done as effectively in the past or as efficiently. I think that the most powerful way that virtual meetings has affected us in my field of practice is in the well being space. And I would say arguably, maybe we've taken it too far in some spaces to lean too heavily on virtual meetings. When human beings still require personal contact, however, they do enable access to one another in a way that we haven't seen before, and that started in a pandemic. So again, back to the level playing field. So I work for a national company that's been very Toronto centric for a long time, but when we all hopped on virtual meetings, everyone is in that room on an equal footing in a hierarchical sense. Whether you're the CEO or a frontline, uh, coordinator, we're all the same size box on the screen. We all are in our homes, or have been. We
all have the cat walking across the screen or the interruption by the Amazon delivery person. And I would say that that vulnerability and humanity has given us a leap into psychological safety that we hadn't seen before, which has really in organizations like mine and others that embraced the potential for that, I would say really accelerated conversations about mental health, well being, psychological safety, and inclusion.
Matt Burns: Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more.
Matt Burns: I think it's talk about a profession and an area of emphasis that relies heavily on communication and having a tool like video conferencing to be able to convey information in a more compelling way. I mean, yes, you can convey information over text message and email and phone call, but there's something more intimate about a video call that you can definitely use to your point to create a greater sense of inclusion.
Matt Burns: So well said. Hey, everyone, it's Matt here.
Matt Burns: I hope you're enjoying today's conversation. And before we continue, I want to update you on my latest creative project this week at work. Every Friday at 07:00
a.m. Pacific Standard Time. That's 10:00 a.m.. Eastern and 03:00 p.m.. GMT. My good friend Chris Rainey of HR leaders and I discuss the latest trending topics on the minds of executives globally, from organizational culture to technology and the future of work. We cover it all, and we invite some of our favorite colleagues to join us, from Dave Ulrich to Whitney Johnson, um, and executives from iconic brands such as NASA, Krispy Kreme, and WebMD.
Matt Burns: What can I say?
Matt Burns: We like to keep things interesting. And if you've been following us for a while, you'll no doubt recognize the fun partnership Chris and I have developed over years podcasting together. We're not afraid to be real, share our own challenges, and ask the tough questions.
Matt Burns: Joining well, that part's easy.
Matt Burns: Follow me on LinkedIn, click the Bell icon on the top right of my profile, and you'll get notified when we go live.
Matt Burns: And now back to our discussion in.
Matt Burns: Terms of technology itself. One thing that you alluded to earlier in your answer that I just want to maybe double click on is, of course, in creating experiences, we're using technology to create a better interface for employees, plan holders, whatever that might be. In terms of interacting with organizations, I think we're going to continue to see that advance with artificial intelligence, creating more of that concierge, chat bot, copilot type, uh, interactivity with information, that'll be a really exciting innovation, I think, ultimately in the safety space, and love to get your thoughts on that.
Matt Burns: But before we do, when you start.
Matt Burns: To run scenarios or situations or cases or even just occurrences through a database, you start to collect information. And one of the things that is kind of the Holy Grail, as it were, for health and safety is, of course, to risk mitigation is far less.
Matt Burns: Costly than putting out fires like fire prevention, firefighting.
Matt Burns: You prefer to do one over the other. We laugh, but it's just infinitely less costly to just not deal with the problem.
Matt Burns: It's just to prevent it. But whether it's buying extra insurance or.
Matt Burns: Paying for your home warranty, whatever it is, we, as humans, like to kind of cut the line of that and see what we can kind of play fast and loose with. Except that we're talking about pretty significant stakes here. And when it comes to data, we have the ability to look at what's happened in the past, learn from it, and then use predictive analytics or prescriptive analytics to actually inform things that we can do.
Matt Burns: Pay attention to slips, trips, and falls.
Matt Burns: In this particular location. Look at this particular employee as it pertains to a pattern of repetitive strain injuries. There's all these great data insights that may have been hard to pull together in the past because they would have been carried in different systems and held by different people who support different cases. But now, because you can pull it all together, you can be really strategic and thoughtful.
Matt Burns: And I'm just curious how, over the last few years, in particular, data has.
Matt Burns: Matured your practice and how you've used data in a different way, perhaps, than maybe you had in the past.
Candace D.: Absolutely. I was smirking, or quietly, so as not to interrupt you giggling when you talked about firefighting, because it is figurative and it's literal. In my, uh, profession, unfortunately, sometimes it is, but yes, preventing those fires is clearly a
much more powerful tool than training people in how to use extinguishers. And however you want to extend that metaphor, and I extend it across, by the way, the spectrum of safety into well being, into accessibility. And this is why we embarked on a journey to integrate those functions into one and found that power there. But we can park that for a moment while we talk about data and information. So definitely data, information analytics over the last decade or so has changed. At my organization, we've been really on a journey to enrich that data with other pieces of data, pulling them together to understand with the help of data scientists, because I am absolutely not one of those really how things correlate in our world to factors that are kind of within the purview of control and control of the safety team, and well being and accessibility and disability management and outside. So we use data sort of typically for two things, and you touched on it as inputs to our strategy. So looking at those lagging indicators, where have things gone wrong in the past? On the safety side, we look at a couple of things.
We look at where things have gone wrong in bulk. You talked about slips, trips and falls. Generally those are not leading to very severe injuries, but they happen a lot. They're harder to control in most contexts. Contexts. And often they lead to lots and lots of lost time. So you have to look at those sort of high frequency, low severity items. Not to get all safety geek on you, but you started it. And then you have to look high potential ones where you're saying, these don't happen a lot, but maybe that's where we start dipping a lot more into near misses. So somebody stepped off a ladder, or they slid off a ladder. Oh, goodness. They didn't hurt themselves. It was only off the first or second rung. But anything that's happening on a ladder is not okay with me. So how do we dig deep into that data and understand all the things that might have contributed to that going wrong? And the power of bringing, um, those disciplines together that I've already mentioned are we've trained our team and we've built language and concepts in our organization about bringing those pieces together. So what was that person's mind on? Were they rushing? Is there something else going on in the work, in their relationships? At work?
It's not that we have a right to know what's going on in their relationships or their home life, but is there something that might be taking their mind off that task? Are there other factors that might be at play. How's their overall well being? I think the real transformation that my team has been able to participate in and lead in the organization is really kind of taking that safety data, that well being data, and applying those various lenses so that we're learning in a more robust, maybe not quite 360, but getting moving in the direction of a 360 view of that data, so we can understand it much more holistically. To understand a different perspective on root cause. Obviously, we apply those learnings, and then we've got to check it on the back end, right? And we know that things like absenteeism, so that's one I look at in the disability management space, absenteeism. Whether we're talking about short term, long term disability, or even work related, those absences get tagged with causes. And those causes are increasingly.
May have a certain diagnosis related to them, but they are increasingly linked with associated causes that have to do with one thing, which is mental health. So whether that's mental health related to their personal lives, how they feel about work, the workplace, their leader, the job in general, a, uh, myriad factors that may have to do with their state of mental well being and how it associates with other physical related issues, other physical issues that relate to their absenteeism. OC, non OC. It's very complex, but those are the types of things that we've been really working on bringing more robustly to the fore, to understand the roles we can play to help our employees to build their mental, physical, and financial resilience such that they can prevent being unable to come to work for whatever that reason might be. Being unable to be present in the workplace, mentally, physically, and to realize their potential in the workplace and stay and contribute meaningfully to what it is we do.
Matt Burns: It's not an easy thing to solve.
Matt Burns: For, because, to your point, from a.
Matt Burns: Complexity perspective, it involves a lot of factors, especially mental health and attribution of.
Matt Burns: I don't want to say ownership.
Matt Burns: That's not the right term. But traditionally, there's been this siloing of issues where we've said, okay, if it happens in the workplace and the workplace is responsible for it, but if it happens five minutes outside the door, even though it had to do with the workplace, it's now kind of your problem.
Matt Burns: And we'll look back at this time and go, that was weird, but the.
Matt Burns: Reality was, that was the way that it was. And now we're into a place where we appreciate that there is no work life balance. It's work life integration. We're all trying to find ways to integrate work and life in a way that makes sense for our work lives, our family lives, our friends, our health, whatever. A number of factors that come into.
Matt Burns: Play when we talk about mental health.
Matt Burns: Though, this is an area where organizations, in particular, since the pandemic, have really stepped up when it comes to providing support and services by changing the narrative in a lot of organizations around what mental health was and what it wasn't. And it's really shone, I think, a necessary light on the state of how people are really doing in organizations. And I know this is an area.
Matt Burns: That, for you in particular, is of.
Matt Burns: Quite particular passion for you. In 2018, you were lucky enough to be recognized as the 2018 Innovator in the Workplace Mental Health Award, which is just, frankly, a remarkable achievement. I'm just curious, what was the kind.
Matt Burns: Of the catalyst behind that, and how.
Matt Burns: Has your thinking evolved since 2018 as it relates to mental health in the workplace?
Candace D.: Thank you, Matt. I'm really proud of that. So thank you for calling that out. When I was contacted by the magazine, uh, in regard to that award, what it really was connected to was the approach that we had been taking, that we were on this journey towards. There's really no arrival, um, but we had been on for some years, which was what I was touching on earlier, and what you're speaking my language about, too, which is this one mind, one body concept that really throws out the window the idea of that checking your brain at the door and checking into your new brain in your body when you cross that, uh, threshold in the building. The previous commonly held belief that you just sort of wash your hands of everything outside the door of your office. So bringing together the disciplines of safety, wellness, disability management, mental health, and sort of starting to draw in accessibility, although that was extremely early days at that time, and saying, what causes our people to not be able to come to work and contribute meaningfully? When you look across occupational, non occupational, it's two things, and neither of these things is going to surprise you. We've already talked about, number one, it's mental health, and number two, it's ergonomic. It's body strains and sprains. It's mental strains and sprains, and all of those things are intrinsically
linked. We know that when we're feeling stressed, our, uh, shoulders hunch, our back tenses, and maybe we go and lift up heavy box and that back finally gives out. Does that happen at home in your garage? Does it happen in our warehouse? One way or the other, the impact on that employee is basically the same. The impact on the organization, the manager, the team, who has to pick up the slack in that work. It's almost all the same. Sure, we might have some additional work to do as an organization if it happens in the workplace, but essentially managing those things separately was really kind of delusional to pretend that we had no interest in supporting that employee, to be well, mentally, physically, and financially throughout their entire lives, because what everyone wants is for that person to be able to come to work and to do it well and to feel good about it and to, in our view, have their lives protected, their lives and their well being protected and enriched by our organization so that they can be safer and more well, always as a result of having worked in our organization. And that's something that we felt tremendously and feel tremendously passionate about. So that was what it was. Diversity can magazine was, uh, tapping into, because I had had some opportunities to speak externally about the road we had been on at that time and had continued on for, uh, quite a long time. The way that we built this out was what I would say has been extremely successful in our culture. And that was another element of the award, which was that we built out our approach based on the risk based continuous improvement cycle that we use in safety. So it's a very long standing practice. It's not just safety, it's quality, it's environment. Professionals in those fields understand that. You identify a risk or an opportunity, you size it up, you say, what are we already doing to mitigate that risk? How do we do better? We look at the data, we look at the performance, we talk to people, and we say, yes, this is a priority, and here's something we can influence to be better, and it's going to have a good impact on the safety of our people and applying that knowledge to mental health, to well being. All of those, um, Fields, kind of in an integrated way, was the way that the approach that
we've been taking in my organization, maybe it's our culture, I would suggest that it's lots of business cultures. It speaks to business leaders in a way that they can understand, and it does help gain traction. Right? Like, if you really understand what's keeping your people from being able to come to work and realize their potential at work, and you really focus on that, there's a lot of sexy things in well being, there's a lot of interesting benefits that you can purchase for your employees. But we found when we were doing, like, walk challenges is the same 200 people that signed up for every single thing we ever did. But it's not the few thousand people who are really at risk that are signing up, who are really engaging in those same things that, um, we were doing again and again. So how do we reach those people at risk? We found that sort of continuous improvement cycle to be something that people could kind of get their arms around, because it's an approach that people kind of understand as a component of business success.
Matt Burns: You raise a number of really important.
Matt Burns: Points, and not least of which is the idea that on the path to.
Matt Burns: Inclusion, at times, we aren't able to meet everybody with where they're at. And we're striving, to your point, to.
Matt Burns: Provide information in new and unique and compelling ways. We're trying to cut through all the noise that occurs inside of organizations to meet employees and leaders with where they're at, so that they can, in some.
Matt Burns: Cases, question or maybe even in some.
Matt Burns: Cases, change their behaviors, uh, such that we can all work in a way that's more healthy, more safe, more, frankly.
Matt Burns: Fun to work at in organizations. And that being said, a lot's changed.
Matt Burns: In the last several years, whether it's the inclusion, uh, of a number of occupational health and safety protocols related to vaccines now. And now we have legislation around hygiene and sanitation protocols, and every occupational, uh, health and safety person that I talk to has, uh, a minor in facilities management. And the amount of support that HR and occupational health and safety and wellness teams and diversity and inclusion teams had to take on over the last three.
Matt Burns: To four years has been a lot. Where do you go for information?
Matt Burns: Where do you go to kind of stay on top of what's happening, to stay up to date with trends? I mean, clearly, you're thinking ahead of the curve.
Matt Burns: I'm just curious where you draw inspiration from.
Candace D.: Thanks. That's an ever changing landscape, just as you mentioned, M. I often joked in the pandemic that I was waiting for my honorary MD in the mail because so many of my colleagues had to somehow figure out what were the tenets of immunology and virology. And I'm, um, super fortunate in my organization. We have a chief medical officer and medical team, so I didn't have to do that. But the pace of change, of necessary information just, uh, accelerated rapidly within this decade, for sure. But in the last while, for me, the most important sources of information, there's the usual things like social media and newsletters and whether or not you sort of have time
to read all those things or not. That varies with what's going on in your life. I personally am very active in my industry, um, working with some government, non government, um, and industry organizations, sometimes in a leadership role, when I sort of decide that I've, for some reason, got time to take on the chair role of those organizations, or just otherwise engaging with my peers in multiple cross sections. So I focus on the telecom sector and, um, I focus on the Canadian federally regulated sector. But I do have the great good fortune to be invited to lots of conferences and networking. Really, I think so much of what we've talked about today, and you asked me about alliances and partnerships, and I've talked about my approach of relationship building. My best information and inspiration comes from connecting with people, growing and deepening my network, having interesting conversations, asking questions with, you know, 20 plus, 25 plus. Oh, my gosh, how old am I now? Um, years into my career, I have come to a place a while ago where I felt really comfortable saying, I don't understand what that means, and I don't know anything about that. Tell me more about that. Where can I learn about that? Whereas earlier in my career, I felt like I had to know everything, especially as a consultant, um, so asking those questions, keeping those contacts, um, sharing information generously when I have it, and creating that sort of business karma out in the universe so that, uh, that good information can come back to me when I need it, is really my main source of information. With all that information, though, it's important to know what makes sense to you in the culture of the organization in, uh, which you work. Um, because I would say all the great ideas in the world aren't going to get you very far unless those ideas plug genuinely and authentically into the culture of the organization where you work. I would say a lot of people in my kind of role talk about safety, culture, wellness, culture, safety first. I'm, um, never that professional, because I know that my organization is here to make money. There's one culture, it comes from the top. We all participate or not. And if I want those ideas to take root, they have to be part of the DNA of the organization, uh, or they're just going to be sort of
painted on Candice.
Matt Burns: Where do folks reach out to you if they wanted to speak out further?
Candace D.: Well, happily, my name is very easily googleable, and if you look me up, uh, on LinkedIn, I am also easy to find there. So, um, I love connecting, I've already made that clear. I'm super passionate about what we do, and I truly believe that if there's anything I can do to support others, to help make their workplaces safer and help them create that safety in whatever context, I'm more than delighted to do it.
Matt Burns: Fantastic. Thank you so much for a great conversation today.
Candace D.: My pleasure. Matt.
Matt Burns: Bento HR is a digital transformation consultancy working at the intersection of strategy, technology and people operations. We partner with organizations, private equity and venture capital firms to accelerate value creation and identify the organization's highest leverage initiatives. And this can take place in many forms, from strategic planning and alignment to technology procurement, implementation and integration, along with organizational design, process reengineering, and change management. With our proven track record of working with complex, high growth organizations, we provide a, uh, lens that goes beyond the balance sheet, increasing enterprise readiness, resilience, and value. For more information, check us out@bentohr.com.