The Culturally Intelligent Safety Professional S2E3 - Reading the room

Simonne's insights reveal the importance of inclusive practices in the workplace, particularly in health and safety roles, where clear communication and understanding are critical. By embracing diverse perspectives, safety professionals can create environments that empower individuals to perform at their best, regardless of their gender, background, or neurodiverse status.

Key Takeaways:

1. Dyslexia as a Superpower: Simonne described dyslexia as a "superpower" within her family, encouraging a positive outlook on neurodiversity. Despite the struggles, dyslexic individuals can thrive by finding strategies that work for them, such as visualization and using technology for support such as spellcheck and AI tools. This mindset helped foster resilience and creativity, particularly in the engineering field where innovative solutions are often required.
2. Gender and Cultural Barriers in Engineering: As one of the few women in engineering when she started her career, Simonne faced challenges, including that frightening encounter where she was threatened while working on a site in the UK. However, she highlights how a combination of persistence and supportive environments, both from her family and colleagues, helped her navigate a historically male-dominated field. Her experiences underscore the importance of creating inclusive spaces for women and people from diverse backgrounds.
3. Communication in Safety and Engineering with Diverse Teams: The discussion emphasizes how safety professionals can communicate more effectively by incorporating visual aids like pictures, infographics to cater to diverse needs. Safety materials should be simplified and made universally accessible to overcome barriers such as dyslexia or language differences. This approach helps in ensuring that everyone, regardless of their background or cognitive style, can understand and act on safety protocols.
4. Inclusive Work Environments for Neurodiverse Individuals: Simonne advocates for flexible working arrangements and calm, quiet spaces for neurodiverse individuals, especially dyslexic employees, to excel. This allows them to process information and contribute their best work. Recognizing the need for both physical and mental workspace adjustments is essential for creating an environment where neurodiverse individuals can thrive. Moreover, fostering an atmosphere of openness about neurodiversity, as Simonne has done, helps reduce stigma and normalizes the conversation, making it easier for others to come forward.

Transcript

Greg: 0:00

Hi, everyone welcome to another episode of the Culturally Intelligent Safety Professional, a podcast aimed at providing a platform where by safety professionals can develop a pathway to enhance their cultural intelligence capability which will help them function more effectively when working in a multicultural situation. I'm Greg Dearsly your host and I have a range of guests lined up to talk to this year. We have people with experiences across leadership psychology, health and safety, education and of course cultural intelligence. All of our guests come from a wide range of different backgrounds across the diversity spectrum, including from different organizational context. In this podcast you'll hear stories aimed at helping you the listener enhance your cultural intelligence. You'll gain an understanding of how you can create trust when working in diverse environments and quite frankly, that's all the time no matter how homogenous the place you work at might be, it's still full of diversity, people with different backgrounds, experiences and beliefs, all built on their figured world So this week we're joined by a real rock star of the engineering world. She's ticked over 20 years at Tonkin and Taylor with over 30 years of experience in the planning, design and construction of civil and environmental projects in the United Kingdom, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and of course here in New Zealand. She's recognized as someone with expertise in waste minimization options, landfill design, leachate management and treatment, risk management, alternative energy solutions, landfill gas management, and landfill closure and capping design. But she's not here to talk about a load of rubbish. Welcome Simone Eldredge.

Simonne: 1:56

Hi Greg, nice to be here.

Greg: 1:59

Great to have you here on the show to have a bit of a chat. And I have set a bit of a high bar and said that we won't talk a load of rubbish. You've worked around the world. Just give us a flavour of how your career has evolved from, getting into engineering until now.

Simonne: 2:18

Yeah, and it's interesting because I always thought as a child that I was going to be a doctor and actually went to Auckland University to study medicine and then realized that it wasn't for me and very quickly switched across to civil engineering. I got my degree from Auckland University, which I'm very proud of, and I'm also very proud that I was able to pick up an internship with McConnell Dowell Constructors, which meant they paid all my textbooks and fees, and I got to do really awesome projects while still as an undergraduate. Then Exploration. I guess I love to explore the world. I almost immediately went overseas. And ended up in London. So I finished my degree and then almost immediately jumped on a plane for that great Kiwi export. Stayed overseas initially in the UK, working on those across the globe. And then was asked to pop over to Hong Kong for a few weeks and left nine years later with a husband and my first child in tow. It was at that point that I changed from a water engineer. So when I moved to Hong Kong, I was helping out with some stormwater design for closed loop landfill management. And that's when I got into the world of rubbish was as you described it, was in Hong Kong. And then I've been back in New Zealand for yes, 20 years. Hard to imagine it

Greg: 3:45

And just looking through your LinkedIn profile, you are you look like you're pretty busy along with having a corporate job at a a pretty busy organization. You also get yourself involved in all sorts of other things. The chair and Facility Advisory Board for the School of Engineering and all sorts of other things. I know you've been involved with Wastemans at a board level. And then it's just the little thing of having a bit of a family going on as well. How do you pack all of that in to your average day?

Simonne: 4:15

Funnily enough, I blame my mother. My mother was the most incredible role model for me. She was widowed at a young age, with four children under the age of ten. I was just nine months old. And she just picked herself up and and really raised me. All four of us to do great things because really there's no choice. You just pick yourself up and get on with things. So that's where I go to blame the mother.

Greg: 4:43

Excellent. So we're not really here to beat around the bush. The main thrust of this episode is neurodiversity, which we'll get to soon and in particular dyslexia. But of course you can talk about a whole range of things across that sort of diversity spectrum. Obviously being a woman in what was probably a pretty male dominated sector when you joined, being engineering and I guess The sectors that involves itself with there's the neurodiverse aspect, which as I said will come to soon, and then you put that all together with traveling overseas and going to a range of different countries. You must have a couple of both good and bad stories about diversity over the last 20 or so years. Do you want to maybe delve into a couple of those?

Simonne: 5:31

I'm sure I've only got one or two, so I'll try and, I'll try and limit myself. I think when it came to women in engineering it has been a really tough road in the sense that when I first first chose to go to engineering school, we really were, there were very few role models. There were very few women. I was fortunate in my year, we hit 10 percent women, so 7 out of 70. Nowadays it's it's doubled that but still not high. And so it was a little tricky. I've had a few instances where I was working alone on a Sunday supervising some works in the UK and didn't like the safety of the the trench. Told the subbie that they needed to stop work at which point they threatened to throw me in the hole and I had to run up to the site office and lock myself in and call the resident engineer. That was pretty well the low point I think of my my engineering career. As a woman feeling vulnerable, but funnily enough, I've since spoken to a number of young men who equally had the same thing happen to them. So the intimidation wasn't, I think, in this particular situation, just because I was a woman, but it was pretty scary. The other more of a highlight I guess is yes, I am proudly dyslexic as is my husband, as is my 21 year old son who is now studying engineering and earth science and I have one child who's not, and we've worked out that we need to be really kind to him because he feels left out. Because he's not the neuro he doesn't have the the label or he doesn't have the the dyslexia, which in our family, we try and think of as a superpower. So learning to to actually adapt and I found, I find helping my 21 year old is much easier than helping my 17 year old, because he understands English and reading and writing and all sorts of cool things like that.

Greg: 7:23

Yeah. Alright let's just Just carry on the dyslexia sort of trail. You've known about this for how long? For yourself?

Simonne: 7:33

I always knew, when I was younger, I got myself into trouble. I'd work really hard on my spelling list and then I'd go to school the next day and I'd be definitely couldn't spell anything, so I'd get into trouble. Words swing around or swim around when I try and read them. I use lots of interesting versions of words because I tend to invert things and I guess I just work that out, but my older sister was probably the one that made it a little bit more apparent for me when she went to university and got involved in a study. At the university as part of research into dyslexia.

Greg: 8:10

Yeah and so you've known about it for a long time. It seems to be a bit of a family thing, although obviously has has not impacted, in the direct way one of your, one of your kids. But obviously it's been something that you've talked about and been really open about and when we were talking a few weeks ago I think it was pretty clear that certainly now, And maybe this was different a while ago. You're pretty open about the situation with anybody that wants to know, needs to know about dyslexia. So have there been some experiences? And I know that there's the organization in the UK called IOSH, which is the Health and Safety Industry Association, did a survey. About a year ago that, that asked if you were neurodiverse, would you tell your employer? And I think 70 percent of the respondents said no because of the response that they had received. You've obviously had the discussion with your employer and how did that go?

Simonne: 9:11

It's interesting because part of the reason why I came out, shall we say, was a lot to do with wanting to normalise the conversation and also to highlight the fact that different ways of thinking are essential for us to to be successful as a society. We can't all be the same. We can't all be lined up looking exactly the same or thinking exactly the same. So part of it was about that. Part of it was also because it was pretty apparent that right from the get go that my older boy was dyslexic himself, and I never, I didn't want him to grow up with any sense of it being anything other than a superpower. So if I was going to do that, then I needed to be honest and open with others. I'm also incredibly incredibly fortunate. I have worked with the most incredible people from across the globe and accepting of me being different probably happened right from the get go, whether it was because I was a woman in engineering or because I was, of Pakeha descent in an Asian country or whether I am, I'm neurodiverse. So therefore, in reality I didn't find it that difficult in the end. But the motivation was profile raising and sometimes it was also just to take some pressure off myself because I put myself under pressure to try and not show too much of, of some of the slightly more complicated things that go with being dyslexic.

Greg: 10:48

I guess in, in the engineering world, there's quite a few of those. It's a very technical space. And so there's there would be things that you'd have to work around to, to try and make sure that, you could, engage with the information that you're dealing with or creating. And so is that one of the, was that one of the roadblocks, back in the early days of just trying to understand engineering, technology, those sorts of things?

Simonne: 11:18

I think I really had to work very hard to digest anything. So I had to hear it multiple times. I needed to read it multiple times. I needed to interact with something multiple times to get it. But once I got it, it was more straightforward. Once I could make sense make sense of it. So therefore you do, you have to, you end up working a lot harder. Certainly if you are writing reports, you need to learn the formula that is a good quality report. I had a client, funnily enough, tell me the other day about a report not appearing to have a beginning, a middle and an end that it just stopped and I thought, oh, that must have been one of my bad day reports. So they still happen. So you got to, you got to use structure, you got to use techniques, but then equally I see the world in pictures. Therefore, I can visualize something. Drawings make sense to me. 3D makes sense to me. And as long as I can see it in my mind, it makes sense.

Greg: 12:17

Just as you were talking there about the seeing things or hearing or reading things, engaging with content multiple times I think I mentioned a chap by the name of Mike Styles who's been working in dyslexia for most of his career and he's written a book about dyslexia and, one of the things he introduced me to was the technology that's available to help people Record content in various different ways, and that was one of the things that he talked about from an education perspective if you're sitting in a lecture room or a training course, it's really difficult to both listen to the content and write it down and probably ingest it in your mind as well. Is that something you it leads you down the path of having to just sit there, listen to it, Record it somehow, and then go listen to it again later.

Simonne: 13:13

There's a couple of things. One is technology's a disadvantage if you're dyslexic on one level, because most of us lose about 25 percent of our reading comprehension when we read something on a screen. And if you've already struggled with reading comprehension, and particularly the way that words swim in front of your eyes then technology is a, is an issue. Secondly, there's some amazing, there's some research that shows that, if you type your notes, there's something about it and it actually just flows out of your brain. So if you're listening and typing, you're not necessarily taking it all in. So I love technology. I still, my children and I and my husband, we all use fountain pens and we all use pen and paper to record things because the act of writing something is a good way to, to take it in. But my son has a an iPad Pro. He has a pencil. He does all of his notes. He then digests it all down through the technology, uses uh, recognition software turns it into his notes. I used to have copious quantities of Lever Arch files with notes upon notes upon notes. The good thing now is that he can do that by writing, still writing, but then the distillation and the dealing with it can be in the electronic media. The other one is Spellchecker. Or any form of AI. AI is my friend. And your ability to use technology to make things easier to communicate in a written format. Although you do have to be careful with spellchecker. I have some stories about that. One, one of my favourite was was that our training instructor in the UK, his name was Rodney Amster, and I sent a report out with Rodent Hamster as being his name. I wasn't very popular for that one.

Greg: 15:09

Excellent. Hey, that's really helpful. What I'd heard was that technology was the be all and end all, but but maybe not not necessarily the case. So thinking about workplace safety which I guess you've been pretty close to in your career as part of, design and engineering and all of those sorts of things. I guess the safety community is really good at creating screeds and screeds of stuff and then putting that little rider at the bottom of it to say, please sign that you've read and understood this. What other ways do you think the safety professional or profession can communicate better taking into account that there may well be a dyslexic person in the room that they may not know about? How can we best do it?

Simonne: 16:01

Pictures, basically, everything, making it simple. Don't a procedure is important, but how can you write that procedure with half, or a quarter, or even an eighth of the words and pictures and that also works if you're working with different nationalities as well. I was talking with a young man, I do professional reviews for the Institution of Civil Engineers, and I was talking with the young man who was talking about all of the ethnicities and languages that were spoken on the construction site that he was supervising in Hong Kong and he felt that even though english was the language of the site when it came to health and safety He really wanted to make sure that everybody understood what it was that they were being asked of them So pictures are brilliant because a picture, a well done picture will enable anybody irrespective of whether they have reading difficulties, irrespective of if they have different languages will be able to to understand what, what's being asked of them.

Greg: 17:04

Now that's super helpful. Actually a friend and colleague of mine gave a presentation a few weeks ago. Shout out to Tom Jones. He's a health and safety professional. He's dyslexic and he's working to educate businesses on how to create more effective ways of communicating across that range or that multiple audiences that that we have. And actually he posed a rhetorical question for everyone to consider. And now the answer might be, Blindingly obvious to the majority of people but whether business owners actually think about this and the question is what percentage of the workforce is it acceptable to not communicate effectively with?

Simonne: 17:49

Tricky thing here though is that our industry attracts a very high percentage of dyslexic people, so therefore You are not just talking about a minority in our industry, you are more often than not, I would argue, talking about a significant close to whether it's parity or more. There's statistics that suggest, 60 70 percent have some form of dyslexia. Whether that is is inflated or not I haven't done the research, but I think that you're in real danger of making assumptions around who is the minority in our industry.

Greg: 18:34

Yeah, I guess what we're saying is. We need to think about our communication across the spectrum, and I don't mean necessarily the neurodiverse spectrum, the spectrum of neurodiverse, the, as you mentioned before, the spectrum of maybe English isn't a first language, and there is going to be a percentage of people Maybe not so much in your industry, but in various industries where school might not have been a particular success. Absolutely. Or education might not have been a particular success. And what's the best way? I think the 50 page SOP on, on how to, I don't know, dig a hole or a trench or whatever is is certainly not the right way. But there are some people that would value that and need that, they, people that value detailed information, um, lots of data, lots of information, and there's others, I think there's a, there's an acronym now, TL:DR, Too Long, Didn't Read.

Simonne: 19:32

Yeah, I think I just go with the glazed over is a point. Yeah, that's right. Other point, so I'm just going to say the other one to add in there though, is that if you want something to resonate, then give it to the demographic. My son's interning for a fantastic organization that may be part of our suite. And he was asked. To to do a visualization of the critical risks for that organization. Now he's a, he's a, an undergraduate in engineering. He doesn't have all the graphic design skills, but he was able to create something that was a really sensible visualization and it's now called their their health and safety shield. And then a graphics person turned it into something that looked really amazing, but because it, he was asked to take these critical risks and represent them that was a really good way to get an outcome that I think was pretty successful.

Greg: 20:23

It's a great idea and a great outcome and I think organizations really struggle to come up with innovative ways to get worker engagement that's meaningful. And, we've heard, totally unrelated, but we've heard recently out of the courts with the with the Maritime New Zealand Prosecution of the ex Port of Auckland CEO about understanding and that directors and leaders need to understand the difference between work as imagined and work as done. And if you've got the workforce creating the instruction or the guidance or the process or whatever it might be rather than some health and safety person sitting in a back office somewhere then your procedure may well be a little bit closer to work as done than if you hadn't involved the workforce. So yeah, that's a great idea to have done that. And it sounds he's really been able to use the superpower. to benefit the company he works for. As we try and wrap up, one of the things I usually get people to talk about is a couple of tips, two or three tips, and maybe you've already given one, about how health and safety professionals can do better when Communicating with people in that neurodiverse spectrum. Dyslexia, there's obviously many others. You've talked about images and pictures and the like. Anything else?

Simonne: 21:49

Something around reading the room. A dyslexic person often disengages from group instructions because they're really hard to follow. So you get fixated or you're busily trying to process. The first part of an instruction, and you can't, you haven't quite caught up to the rest of them. Now that's not because you're slow, it's because you're trying to create an image that cements it in your brain. So that group instruction or that I think sometimes about toolbox talks, how those can actually sometimes be debilitating if it's a group instruction rather than a personal one on one. That, that's one that plays on and the other one is about the environment. So health, safety and welfare. I'm a huge advocate for flexible working, I'm a huge advocate for creating calm, quiet spaces for people to be able to to gather their thoughts and and bring themselves their best person to work. And part of the reason I took my job at my current employer is because I see that it was a no brainer. I had to have an office. And that was before I even came clean about my dyslexia. Nowadays, of course, you don't get offices, so now you create other ways to create a calmer space where people can do their best work.

Greg: 23:14

That's really helpful. So yeah and it's some ways, It's maybe the health and safety person, if they are the person delivering the toolbox talk or whatever it might be, and of course if they're aware that there might be a dyslexic person or two in the audience checking in with them maybe after the event. I guess it's problematic if they don't know but then I guess if you've thought about it going in, And maybe some of the content is not just a hundred words on a PowerPoint slide there's some images there that sort of cater to to, to many different people with different needs around communication. And as you said before, the the English as a second language it can be helpful with imagery is as well. In that calm space. Yeah, great idea. And obviously for those that can the sort of the flexible working arrangements have obviously been beneficial. Obviously, thinking that there are people that can do that. Do jobs that mean that flexible working, as we normally talk about it, is probably not an option for them because they have to do the do and and are out doing physical activities.

Simonne: 24:24

Absolutely, but how do you create the environment for them to do the paperwork that they need to do? So flexibility, depending on what the work is that goes with the activity you're asking them to do.

Greg: 24:35

Outstanding. Hey, Simonne, thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate you putting the time aside. I know we're just on the run up to Christmas and no doubt you're heading off away from work for a while at the end of this week and so that will be no doubt a very beneficial break. Hope you've had a good year and Yeah, just looking forward to 2025 and and achieving a whole lot more and for my part, looking just to help promote the superpower across the neurodiversity spectrum that, that, we know a lot of a lot of people do do have to try and manage and certainly in a world that I think Hasn't particularly got quite on board with understanding it just yet.

Simonne: 25:18

Thank you.

Greg: 25:19

I think Simone's insights reveal the importance of inclusive practices in the workplace particularly in health and safety roles with clear communication and understanding are critical. By embracing diverse perspectives, safety professionals can create environments that empower individuals to perform at their best, regardless of the gender, background or neurodiverse status. Some of my takeaways from this discussion. Dyslexia as a superpower. It's not the first time we've heard this, but, Simonne did describe dyslexia as a superpower within her family. Encouraging that positive outlook on neurodiversity. Despite some of the struggles, dyslexic individuals can thrive by finding strategies that work for them, such as visualization and using technology for support such as spellcheck and other AI tools. This mindset, help foster resilience and creativity, particularly in the engineering field where innovative solutions are often required. Gender and cultural barriers and engineering. As one of the few women in engineering, when Simonne first started her career, she faced challenges, including that frightening encounter when she was threatened while working on a site in the UK. However, She highlights how combination of persistence and supportive environments, both from her family and colleagues help to navigate a historically male dominated field. Her experiences underscore the importance of creating inclusive spaces for women and people from diverse backgrounds. Communication in safety and engineering with diverse teams. The discussion emphasizes how safety professionals can communicate more effectively by incorporating visual aids like pictures and infographics to cater for diverse needs. Safety materials need to be simplified and made universally accessible to overcome barriers such as dyslexia or language differences. This approach helps in ensuring that everyone, regardless of their background or cognitive style, can understand and act on safety protocols. Creating inclusive work environments for neurodiverse individuals. Simonne advocates for flexible working arrangements and calm, quiet spaces for neuro diverse individuals, especially dyslexic employees to enable them to Excel. This allows them to process information and contribute their best work. Recognizing the need for both physical and mental workspace adjustments is essential for creating an environment when neurodiverse individuals can thrive. Fostering an atmosphere of openness about neuro-diversity as Simonne has done helps reduce stigma and normalizes the conversation making it easier for others to come forward. So we've come to the end of this episode, thanks so much for listening. I hope you found something valuable that you can take away that might enhance aspects of your own cultural intelligence. I'll add the transcript from the episode to the show notes. If you'd like to talk about cultural intelligence, get in touch with me via LinkedIn. I'm posting content regularly, so keep an eye on your feed and comment if you see something that resonates. If we aren't connected, send me an invite. If you want to hear more about CQ, you can follow and subscribe to this podcast, I would really appreciate it if you did that, and keep an eye out for the next episode. Ma te wa.