#50 - Steff Williams - Why I Do What I Do: On Putting People First in Safety

More often than not, what I try to do, Musa, is put myself in other people's shoes and go, how would that feel for them to be spoken to in a certain way? You know, some people from a hierarchical perspective in our organization, they're scared. That's why I said earlier, I don't care about titles. Just speak to me as if I was your newest temp employee and tell me what's good about your job, what's bad about your job, what annoys you. But some people can't. They're like, whoa, what? You know, it's so-and-so that's here. Respect's a different thing. Respect and politeness is owed to everybody and should be given by everybody. But when it comes to hierarchy of positions, there's no operator in any facility, in any organization, should feel scared of speaking to anybody. If they do, there's something seriously wrong with the culture.

You are listening to the Safety Heroes Podcast, the podcast where we delve into the world of safety professionals and explore the critical role they play in ensuring every human who Our guests are the unsung heroes and natural leaders of the safety space. If you're in the safety space or have no clue what happens in safety functions, this podcast is for you. Join us as we celebrate these heroes, hear their stories, and discover the human side of safety and make sure it's constantly evolving for the safety of our people. My name is Moussa. I'm the founder and CEO of Pixera, a digital safety platform. and your host for these episodes. Because when it comes to safety, every hero deserves a voice. So, welcome to the Safety Heroes Podcast. Hey everyone. Today we're joined by Steph Williams, Director of Safety for Sunoco Europe and APAC. A passionate safety leader, Steph is committed to driving culture change, empowering teams, and making safety a shared responsibility across Sunoco, um, and for people who interact with him. Stef, it's great to finally talk to you. I hope you're good.

Awesome, Musa. Great to be here.

Awesome. So, yeah, honestly, just help us learn more about your journey. I know it's a mouthful, but yeah, try to be as intimate as possible. How did you get here?

No problem. I always like, Musa, to go right back to the start. And when I say that, people go, oh my goodness, I'm going to hear this guy's whole life story. You're not. But what I like to do is go back to the beginning where I was actually born and raised on a farm. on the west coast of Scotland on a small island. I start that as the starting point with my journey because I truly believe that is where my values were taught to me and hard work was taught to me. So when I speak about humble beginnings, my upbringing on a farm, which was very, very hard work on the west coast of Scotland, let me, let me tell you, that's where I started. So

what is that like? I'm not gonna let you move from that before you explain it to us. I mean, how hard is it to be

When I hear people complain about bad weather, on the west coast of Scotland, you would sometimes look outside before you had to go outside because you were looking after animals. You had a huge responsibility. You'd often look outside and the rain would not be coming downwards, it would be coming towards you. So literally, you would have to put— and it was so cold, you'd have to put on, and all you'd eventually see is the small part of your face. And you'd literally, you'd go outside and it was just relentless wind, rain. However, when it was beautiful, calm, blue sky, it's just the most picturesque place that you could ever, ever wish to be. So I look back and think, wow, farming, farming is a tough, tough life. Very, very rewarding, but very, very tough. And it teaches you a lot in life. So I was very, very pleased that that is the way I was brought up, despite how tough it was.

Yeah. That's so fascinating. Honestly, I've never delved into that world. I just feel it in my heart that it's so rewarding. You're working with earth and with—

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And also because we were by the sea, I have a great affinity with any water, whether it be the ocean or whether it be rivers. And I think that's because of that, because the farm we were on overlooked what they call the Sound of Mull. So it was the island of Mull on the west coast of Scotland, and it's just beautiful. So I was very, very lucky from that sense.

Wow, cool.

So from there, really, I left Scotland and I moved to England, and that's kind of where my professional career took off, actually in logistics and distribution. And that was when my tenure started with the Coca-Cola Company, and I started with them with distribution logistics. And it was halfway through my time with them— so I spent 10 years with the Coca-Cola system— but it was halfway through my time with them that actually our talent management crew there approached me about a safety role. And I looked at them and thought, yeah, you must be kidding, mustn't you? Because I was operations, purely operations. So, and you can imagine Coca-Cola factory, I think it was the 2nd largest literage in the world. So, a huge, huge facility. So, when they spoke to me about safety, the first question I had was, why? And they said they'd been watching the way I operated as an operations leader. And they said that regardless of what it was we were trying to do with increasing productivity, automating, whatever it was we were trying to do, I was always the one that put the people card on the table, along the lines of, how do we engage our people? What impact will it have on our people? How do we make sure that they're with us on this journey? I guess it was the caring side of me that even though I was a deep red, if you've ever done the insight side of stuff, deep red, operational-driven on numbers, there was obviously this side of me that was detected, and great by them that they'd seen that, because I didn't see it even in myself. So that, that was when I started in safety. So I thought, well, hey, why not? Let's go and give this a go. So I'll be honest with you, Musa, my only regret now that I've been in it for as long as I have is not doing it sooner. Because I often say to people who don't understand what safety professionals do, tell me what can be better than getting up every day, making sure that people do not get hurt and do not get ill at work. Regardless of what industry you're in, whether you're in an office environment, whether you're in the highest hazardous environment you can be in, that's what I get up for every single day is to make sure that people are reduced exposure to harm in every way possible. So I started my tenure in safety in Coca-Cola, got to my 10-year point with them and really wanted to do something different. Had never really heard of Sunoco, who I'm now with, and I'm coming into my 10th year with them now. But they were looking for somebody to cover 5 different paper mills across Europe. So I went and had an informal discussion with the guys here at Sunoco. And here I am 10 years later, I'm in my kind of 4th different role. And I always like to make the link back to where I started my story on that island because I'm not into these big titles, if I'm honest with you, Musa. It's like when people ask me what I do, I say, apparently I've got responsibility for safety across Europe and Asia Pacific. So where I sit now is in an organization That's absolutely fantastic, if I'm honest with you. Their philosophy and approach to looking after people is hard to describe. It's hard to describe. They truly, truly care about the people that work for us and want to do everything that we can to make sure that nobody does get hurt. And that's a commitment from the very, very top of our organization, and it filters all the way through the organization. So we are an $8+ billion organization. We've grown significantly in the last few months due to a serious acquisition that just took place actually here in Europe. So we're around 330, 340 sites across the whole of the world.

How many people?

We're around about the 25,000 total headcount now. So not the biggest in the world.

Still massive.

No. Yeah, well, I'm very proud to say that since this most recent acquisition, We are now the largest paper can manufacturer in the world and the largest metal can manufacturer in the world. So I will guarantee that you'll have something in your home or office that we've been part of making.

That's

amazing.

Honestly, I want to just go back before we lose what you spoke about when you spoke about your journey. I feel there's like this unlock that happens when you realize if you're a people person and everything you said about yourself, I'm very similar to how you operate. I was like extremely organized, extremely process-oriented, but I've always cared so much about people and I never understood how powerful that is. And when you unlock it, when you open it up and you actually make your life about that, it's so fulfilling, it's so energizing. And within the world of safety, I think what excites me about it is people have a very wrong label for— people understand it very differently. And I was one of those people. And then when you realize it's actually a people function, In, in very important industries where it's actually about really helping that frontline worker who's in most cases the most neglected person in that value chain.

100%.

You're actually doing everything you can to make sure you're looking out for them and, and helping them out. It becomes so fulfilling and so energizing. And, and again, like, it's not about titles. And you see that, you see that across safety. And that really excites me when I hear you say this. I can see you're saying it from the heart. And it's awesome.

And you know, the other thing I talk about a lot is, and linking to what you've just said, Moussa, which I love, it's the why are we here? Because we're only here for a short period of time. And I know that starts to sound very philosophical, but you're like, okay, why are we here? Why am I working with the people I'm currently working with? Why have our paths crossed? Because, you know, I'm not doing this alone. In our organization of 26,000-ish people across the world, We've got fantastic people that work for us in the safety field. In our organization, we've got 300 or 400 people, all of whom are driving in the same direction to help our leadership achieve what we need to achieve. So, I look at that from a kind of helicopter view and go, why are we here? I know why I'm here. I know what my purpose is in life. I know what I need to do every single day. That's what my own motivation is. I don't need anybody to motivate me when I get up in the morning. I know exactly what I need to do. So, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I love it. Cool. So we always anchor on people. I know when we talk about why we do what we do, it's always people, people, people. If you were to take a step back and think about, you know, a massive organization and a massive scope, like the scope you're covering, how do you structure your activities and the things you need to do to make sure everything runs in a healthy way? And what are your priorities? Maybe start off with like, these are the things I always want to achieve. We know we care about people, but what are you trying to— what does success look like for you? And then we can go back. And understand what you do to get there.

I'll be open and candid with you, Moose, as far as our organization is concerned, and me to a degree. We were late to the party of what we describe in our profession as preventing SIFs, so serious injury and fatality. We've labeled them something slightly different in our organization, which is done in others, which is called life-changing event exposures. So we were late to that party because people have been working on that for a lot, lot longer than us. So we really started on that in earnest in the last 7 years approximately. So my why is, and every single day what I want to do is to make sure that people do not come close to experiencing what we would describe as a life-changing event. And what we mean by a life-changing event is either life-ending, which is the most tragic scenario, or having an injury that has caused significant injury enough that their life has changed forever. If you're in my profession, you will read every week We're in the year 2025, and I still read in safety professional magazines and press about the injuries that occur and that are so, so preventable, so preventable. But you continue to read them in organizations who have not embraced what they need to embrace. And it doesn't cost a lot. People who say, oh, we haven't got the money, it doesn't cost a lot to put some basic, basic controls in place. So, we've moved away, Musa, from trying to fix everything. which a lot of organizations— I, and some of our sites are still doing it. They're trying to fix everything, and they put the same level of urgency on the most minor of injury that could have been nothing more than it was. Still not okay that anybody's injured, you know, and I get that. But if you then turn around and look over here and go, wow, somebody could have a significant injury based upon what's happening over there, that's where you need to go and pay attention to. So that's what I drive my energy into. I listen And I'm in so many meetings and talk to people about what they're working on. And I go, you know, well done, well done. But I go, where are you really trying to reduce that exposure to the severest amount of harm? Because with all of our sites across the world, exposure exists everywhere to different levels because there's different processes. We're very, very dynamic in what we do. And that's why I love the organization again, because it's not just one process, it's loads of different things that we do. So there's challenges with all of that. So it's reducing that exposure to the severest of harm and removing that from our operations and learning from that, Musa, because we have so many learning opportunities to go, okay, this happened in so-and-so site in so-and-so country. Could the same happen elsewhere? A lot of the time the answer is yes. Okay, well, take that learning where somebody came really close to being severely injured. and make sure that you put controls in place that they don't happen elsewhere.

So yeah, like the SIFs topic is just so powerful and I want to dig deeper into it. And then I think the other unlock, it's like you go through SIFs and now I can focus on 20% of the activities that cause the majority of the serious injuries and fatalities. And then human performance principles becomes this other unlock. It's like this maturity that we go through within the world of safety. It was like, oh, okay, no, it's about people. It's about, you know, everyone's going to make mistakes and how do we empower and how do we Plan better? How do we look at the drive context? An industry that I'm completely blind to, honestly, is the industry you operate in. Like, help us understand, when you think of SIFs, what are the things that scare you? What are the main risks?

Well, there's too many to list. Immediately they come to mind, and this is, you always unlock from your experience, don't you, of what you've gone through. So confined space, we have so many of. in one of our particular divisions, and we've experienced some bad stuff happen in confined space, which is unacceptable, not so long ago. So confined space is always at the top of my list. We make heavy-grade paper. So in our paper mills, anybody familiar with the paper mill environment, on average, a paper mill will have 60+ identified confined spaces.

Wow.

So, and our teams have to frequently enter those for one reason or another. Either through regular maintenance or breakdowns, etc. And they're not all the same, they're all different, but in some certain areas, hazardous gases exist. And it was in an event like that only a short time ago that we suffered some fatalities, which, you know, as I say, is unacceptable. So confined space is always up there. Forklift truck and pedestrian interaction, again, because of some stuff that's happened in our organization and many others, just for me, is always at the top. Every single one of our facilities has got a forklift truck. It doesn't matter whether they've got 1 or whether they've got 20. Trying to make sure that we reduce that exposure for people and forklift trucks is paramount because people can become very complacent working around a forklift truck. You know, if I work with you every day, say, hey, it's Musa on the forklift truck, and you don't, you don't see the danger, you don't, until something then happens, you're like, man.

Yeah.

So Forklift trucks, confined space, working at height, you know, that, that's, I mean, it's serious in the construction.

Aerial lifts maybe.

Yeah, aerial lifts, you know, we work at height, not so much, we work at height in various places depending on what we're doing. And then machinery guarding. We've got so many different types of equipment, some are better guarded than others just because of the process, some are older than others, so the newer pieces of equipment are much smarter. But guarding, and it's not so much the guarding, Musa, it's the And when everything's running, everything's fine. It's the minute people have got to intervene, when the intervention starts to happen, either on a breakdown, because the minute there's a breakdown, people just want to get the machine back up and running.

Back up as soon as possible.

And you've almost— I'm a visionary guy, so you almost imagine that there's this— the minute a breakdown occurs, there's a big clock that starts to tick above people's heads. And whether, you know, if you speak to leadership, they'll say, no, no, there's no pressure to get that line back up and running. And often There isn't. They're like, no, no, you take your time to fix it safely and get it back up. But the driver in the production guy's head is, I need to get this back up and running as soon as possible, because they know downtime's not good. So they're never told to go and do it. There's just this big clock and it's like all the time another minute passes and that line's down, the pressure builds. So that's when shortcuts start to happen and people make decisions that are not best placed. So, so It's that that we are currently really driving on, is getting people to make better decisions on a daily basis with the situation that they're currently in. So that's very hard because you're trying to get inside people's heads.

Yeah, 100%. I mean, what I see happen in different industries is they always start to— they're like, you know what, people need to take a step back and be aware right before the activity. So they start adding these activities that kind of support the toolbox talk, pre-task check activity with the list.

Yeah.

They say every time this happens, just before you operate to reenergize, go through, like to reactivate, just go through these steps, you know, and it's transformational. It's like, that's the best thing that's taken from, uh, you know, operating rooms and medical industry.

Well, I mean, you think, you think of, you think of airlines and the checks that those guys go through religiously.

Yeah. It just gets you, gets you back onto like, yeah, it does.

It works. So

yeah, it's so powerful.

But, but more often than not, you know, hindsight's a wonderful thing. When we then go look at the stuff that hasn't gone quite to plan, you're like, wow, okay, if only, you know, if only this had been— but after the event, it's too late often. So yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And what else was I expecting to hear? Like, what about live electrical? Do you get like, uh—

Yeah, I mean, yeah, the set, the set. I mean, all of your top, your top 8 or 9. So live electrical, energy isolation, machinery guarding, traffic management

at sites.

Traffic management, yeah, a lot of our sites, they're very, very busy. Yeah, exactly. So, and then we, because of our business, we're scattered all over the world. We've then got extremes of temperatures to deal with, and that makes it, and that's why it's interesting, even more challenging because in our Nordic regions and up in the north, we've got the deep temperatures, the lowest temperatures to deal with compared to then down into the south of Europe and into Asia and in Southern America where your temperatures are through the roof. So all of that brings its own challenges also.

Yeah, I love it, honestly. And of course, the cultural differences across sites. And then as soon as you start operating globally, the challenge becomes exponentially harder.

It does. It does. And the way we approach it in our organization, Musa, is it Culturally, yes, there are huge differences. So what's acceptable in your normal life outside of work in some countries would not be acceptable in others. So, you know, I operate out of the UK. I'm just not here very often, but I operate out of the UK where the legal requirements are some of the highest and best in the world. And that's why we have the least deaths at work in the world. You know, The proof's in the pudding. It works. In other countries, that's not the case, unfortunately for them, for lots of different reasons. However, what we try to do in Sunoco is, okay, we're not only trying to make sure that when you cross that threshold and come into our workplace, you've got certain things that we expect of you and to keep others safe, not just yourself. But what we want to do is translate that outwards to people in their home as well, because We genuinely care about people, and you're no good to me or your family if you're injured. So whether that happens outside of work or inside of work, so what we try to do is this wholesome view of people to go, we care about you whether you're here or whether you're outside of work. It doesn't matter whether you've just crossed the threshold and come into work. We care about you as an individual and your family. So that's difficult in some countries.

And like all your activities and all your actions need to demonstrate that because that gets People believe that through action.

Correct. And that's a lot of the work we've done in the last couple of years, Musa, is around if I speak to like-minded safety professionals, then you're speaking to the choir. It's like, yeah, they know what needs to happen. It's to your supervisor level and your leader level in the sites. I only touch some of the sites that I go to for a short period of time. They live and breathe that site, and they're there, it's their second home. So, it's those are the people that we're trying to unlock to go, This is how we look after people. So

do you use many contractors or is it mostly in-house?

No, we do. So again, that varies. When we have major shuts, we call them maintenance shuts, particularly in our paper side, we do complete overhauls of equipment. Or if we're spending significant capital and doing big projects, sometimes we'll have in excess of 100, 120 contractors on a site at any given time. That can go to the extreme of we've got kind of in-house contractors that regularly work in facilities. So it depends on the division, depends what's going on in that division, and then it depends on the time of year. It kind of ebbs and flows. But yeah, contractor control is a big part of our work.

But yeah, unlike maybe infrastructure projects, major construction projects, or oil and gas or mining projects, in that market you feel like everyone's always subcontracting subcontractors.

Yeah, we don't like that.

So you're not like that. Yeah. So like, if you talk to that market, their biggest concern is usually we have, it's a black box after, after we award the contract, the contractor says I'm meeting your expectations, but then, you know, safety certificates are being passed along. People just want to hit their target. And the whole system is kind of frigged because they're trying to award to the lowest bidder and, and the people who get the worst part of it are the frontline workers again. But I, when I understand manufacturing, it's a bit different. It's about actually empowering the people that work there. Yeah.

Correct.

By giving them the right, you know, make sure they have just the right culture, the right space, the right empowerment.

Exactly.

And maybe the steps, you know, like take these steps before you.

Yeah. And I'll be honest, they are the ones that have got the solutions also, because, I mean, in an organization like ours, we're very lucky because we have people that just don't leave. And because of that, then you build up a huge amount of experience and knowledge and they know all the nuances. They, you know, they know the equipment inside out, upside down. So that, that for us, and we're unlocking that more and more, which is moving away from this. And I wish, I wish other organizations would do it because I keep on hearing stuff and seeing stuff where it's like, ah, the operator did this, you know, what a stupid thing to do. You don't— we don't, we don't employ stupid people. Nobody gets up in the morning and goes, well, today I am going to seriously hurt myself. Seriously? Or I'm going to seriously hurt somebody else at work. Really? So, you know, when people say, why did you do that stupid thing? We don't employ stupid people. These people have got the— they've got all the answers. All you need to do is tap. You just need to tap into it. Exactly.

And they're scared. And they're scared. Like, I was at a site recently, and it's natural. What happened is very natural. But I was with a safety director, and we were— our product is a training product. It's like people use it in classroom training, and everyone engages. It creates a lot more engagement and captures data and gives people a digital passport to try to help them not retrain as they move to different sites. But as we were delivering the training for the first time, a group of people was making mistakes. And the first thing he jumped in to do was, oh, this team is not the best team. And naturally, I think as a safety professional, he was coming from a place of shock that people were making mistakes when it's a very basic awareness level training. And I had to intervene pretty quickly and say, great job, guys, or whatever. And I took him a bit on the side and I was like, Imagine how scared this person is already because it's their job, it's their livelihood. Your colleagues and your managers are seeing that you're probably making a mistake where what you really need to give them is complete empowerment to be vulnerable and then talk to them afterwards and be like, hey, by the way, I noticed. Tell me more. Open up. I'm here for you. My role is to help you. And he was like, oh my God, I don't know what came on to me 100%. But, but it's— we have this natural tendency to react. I do it all the time at work. I'm like, are you guys— but we have to just build that muscle and understand the power of helping people feel safe and helping people be vulnerable because they are the experts. But when you're afraid, you can't operate. Your mind shuts down. You start second-guessing yourself.

Yeah.

When, when we spoke to them after, they actually knew everything, but the whole situation being around people—

Clouded them. Yeah, exactly.

Clouded them.

Yeah. And you know what I love as well, going back to the why we're here and the whole piece around individual, individual people, is every single person's different. You've all got different things going on in your life. You've all got different priorities. You've all got your own different perception. You view things differently. You make different decisions. So you can't, you cannot just turn around. I mean, like you just said then, oh yeah, this team, it's like they're a team of individuals. It's like, yeah, there'll be, there'll be a culture within that team. that's been generated. But, you know, they're all, they're all individual single people, aren't they? And it's, um, you know, more often than not, what I try to do, Moussa, is put myself in other people's shoes and go, how would that feel for them to be spoken to in a certain way, to be approached? Because, you know, some people from a hierarchical perspective in our organization, they're scared of people.

Of course.

I don't want anyone— that's why I said earlier, I don't care about titles, just speak to me as if I was your newest temp employee and tell me what, what's, what's good about your job, what's bad about your job, what annoys you. Forget the fact that I do the job, that I'm not interested in titles, just speak. But some people can't. They're like, whoa, what, you know, it's so-and-so that's— And respect's a different thing. Respect and politeness is owed to everybody and should be given by everybody. But when it comes to hierarchy of positions, there's no operator in any facility, in any organization should feel scared of speaking to anybody. If they do, there's something seriously wrong with the culture.

Exactly. And it's our role, like, it's the leader's role to not spend their time with senior people, is to go down there, like, tap them on the shoulder, be human with them, help them break through it. Some cultures need that.

Find out a bit about them, you know, know about their lives. Because like we said at the very start of this discussion, work is very important. But work's going to carry on well beyond the time, you know, this organization I work for, I love it. I want to retire from this organization, but it will move on and it will forget about me in years to come. My children won't.

Exactly.

You know, so that, that's what's important. So find out a little bit about the people that work for you. You know, what are their hobbies? What, you know, what is their family life? What are they doing at the weekend? Because if you don't, you don't care. All you care about is, are you doing the job today the way we expect you to and making me money?

Absolutely. Honestly, like something that I learned very recently is the power of thinking about colleagues and people around you in the team from a perspective of are they shining, you know, from perspective of energy.

Correct.

Like some people are also in a role that they don't like where they're draining energy, they're complaining because they probably need to move on and find something that fits them better or they need a different role.

100%.

But when people shine, like a big part of when you think of safety, it's you're really trying to make sure people are Authentically happy where they are, you know. And when people are content and enjoying where they work, and it's creating that space to allow them to find that and to be comfortable with sometimes saying, actually, it's not, and I'm not worried about moving on. But when, when that energy exists around you, it breaks barriers, improves performance.

And also all of that, plus knowing what your purpose is in this facility today. Because if you don't know— I mean, a lot of our processes, Moosa, involve Making or creating something that then goes on. We're only a small part of the process. It then goes on to the next part in maybe in another country, another building, or whatever. It's amazing. And I've started to ask this question a lot more when I watch a load of operators busy doing stuff and crafting stuff and making stuff. I said, do they know what's happening to that, where its final destination is? You know, the leaders of the site will often go, no, I don't think they probably will. If I was an operator, I'd want to know what I was spending 8, 9, 10 hours a day making and where it was going, because it's fascinating when you find out where some of our product ends up. I'd want to know what I was contributing to, and we should let them know that and say, hey, you're not just making this for the sake of it. This is going— you know, a lot of our stuff serves people. Helping people. Yeah, yeah, it goes into the medical world. It goes into a lot of the stuff we do for the food world. So during COVID in fact, we couldn't keep up with orders because we were serving medical, we were serving food, and obviously everybody was filling their pantries up. So Know that the role you are doing really, really matters. And when you've got then that self-worth and self-understanding of what you're doing, then, you know, as you said, if you're not happy with it, go find something else. But, you know, encompassing all of that should make people feel really good about themselves.

Yeah, I'm gonna take that one on, honestly. Like, I don't spend enough time making sure people understand their purpose in the organization. And if you don't understand your purpose, it can be a major contributor to actually feeling a bit lost and just keeping yourself busy.

your motivation? And that's where I go back to the start of what we said, is I don't need someone to— I'm lucky just because of my own makeup. I don't need someone to motivate me every day and go, you know, come on. It's like, I know what I need to do. If I then put myself into an operator's shoes, the alarm goes off in the morning, I'm going into this building to make this product, and I have no idea what, what it's for. I just go in there every day, I have a good laugh with some of my mates. Yeah, we really need to spend more time on that. So

I I feel like it sucks away your light as well. Like, you'll see it in the person's eyes, you know, and it's okay to move on and find something else. Like, the fear of that, you can help manage them out, give them the right references, give them the right recommendations. But as you said, they live— everyone lives once.

Yeah, exactly.

You want to make sure you're spending it where you actually shine. Exactly. Amazing. Steph, man, I'm really enjoying this. There's so many things that I want to go through, but I know we don't have that much time. So yeah, I think you've done this for quite a bit of time. been, you know, a leader, and I can see how passionate you are. If someone is coming into the space as a new joiner who's still like figuring out what safety is about, what advice would you have for them?

Put people center and front, because regardless of what industry you're in, there will either be— it'll be heavily leaned towards processing equipment, there'll be a smaller amount of people in there, or depending on the industry, Some of our organizations, for instance, within Sunoco are very manual. So there's a lot more people regardless of that mix of people and process. Concentrate on the people. The process, yeah, needs to be looked after, but concentrate on the people. We live in this crazy world where every single day, the amount of times I hear the words AI, artificial intelligence, you're like, okay, it's the latest buzz, isn't it? And people are worried because they're like, you know, am I going to have a job in the next few years?

Is a robot going to take my role?

We're always, always going to need people. So if you, you know, my eldest son is in his career. He's, he's a, I'm very proud to say he's a serving police officer here in the UK. My youngest son doesn't quite know what he wants to do yet. I'll never push him into something, but he's curious about what I do and he's like, yeah, I'm quite, and I said, look, come and do this because it does not matter what industry it is, what organization it is. It's so rewarding. It is so, so rewarding. And as I said earlier, what can be better than getting up every day to make sure that people in your organization do not see harm, do not see ill health? Seriously.

I love it. And honestly, the thing about it is the person needs to— like, I got my spark through experience. You got your spark through experience. It's like the person has to naturally get to that place where it opens his heart and he realizes its power.

Correct.

It's just, it's just, yeah, it's just so interesting and fascinating why there's this big misconception.

It's massive. Yeah, no, it is. And, you know, and I'll give you an ex— I'll give you a real example. I was in a site, one of our sites last week, and I had a conversation with an operator because we intervened in something that was going on. He didn't speak— he was in Spain, so the language barrier was difficult. So I had somebody to interpret with me. I wanted him to understand that all I cared about was making sure that he did not get exposed to harm. But going back to what we said earlier, where I could see the fear in his eyes because it was like, ah, you know, whatever they told him about who was coming to site. I had a conversation with him, and I wanted him to understand the only reason we're having this discussion is you're not in trouble at all. I says, I want to understand why you've made the decisions you've made, but most importantly of all, I don't want you to get hurt today. That's what I care most about. So, and you could see the kind of anxiousness drained from him, and he was like. Okay. And then he started to talk. Yeah, it was. And he talked a lot more and he talked more freely. And then he started to explain why he'd made the decisions he'd made. And it literally, Musa, took 30 to 40 seconds for me to say, I'm here to make sure you— I don't want you to get hurt. That's what— that's all I care about.

I love it. Yeah, it makes complete sense. And honestly, it's amazing that people like you exist in these functions and are like helping. And honestly, I don't know how much appreciation you get, but it means a lot to so many people. And yeah, Steph, honestly, really happy I got to meet you, got to learn more about you.

Absolute pleasure.

I hope to keep in touch. We'll probably talk more. If you're ever in London, we can do a face-to-face conversation and we can dive deeper into it.

Been a pleasure to talk to you, Moussa. Have a great day.

Cool. Awesome.

Thanks a lot. Take care. Bye-bye.

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