(bright music) - Stay tuned for "On Q," for KSMQ Public Television.

I'm Eric Olson.

How can we make safety training at work a fun experience?

Oh boy, Brad Kramer will show us how.

And we're going to catch up on what the Austin Chamber of Commerce is doing to help Austin grow, with Elaine Hansen.

Executive director will be here.

It's all coming up "On Q."

♪ Local ideas that matter to you ♪ ♪ Sharing our regions' unique point of view ♪ ♪ Telling the stories that you never knew ♪ ♪ On Q ♪ ♪ On Q ♪ ♪ On Q ♪ Safety management is always on the minds of business owners, large business, small business, really doesn't matter.

Safety's number one, we always hear about it.

Safety trainer from Provenio Consulting in Albert Lea, Brad Kramer, joins us now.

Welcome, Brad.

- Hi Eric.

I'm glad to be here.

- Yeah, you work with companies about safety.

How did you get started in this line of work?

- Well, basically I had a background in operations and manufacturing, worked my way up into being an EHS, or environmental health and safety manager for some large companies and smaller manufacturing as well, and had a background in firefighting and a few other areas that really kinda worked out well.

So, went out about five years ago to start my own business and helping other businesses meet their objectives.

- Okay, very good.

And I know in Albert Lea a lot of diverse businesses, even in the industrial park area there.

What's the kind of injury, what's the garden variety workplace injury?

- Well, it could be ergonomics is a big one, making workers lift things that are heavier or not in a way that your body's designed to move.

So if you're not lifting things correctly or using the right equipment, you end up with back injuries, shoulder injuries, stuff like that that's extremely expensive to repair and it really takes away from that that employee's quality of life.

So that's a big one.

- And that's not, it's not like something falling on you.

It's just a random something as simple as picking up a box.

- Absolutely.

- And so it's training people how to lift properly, exercise or something or?

- I would say even beyond getting into training to lift correctly, I look at how do we fit the worker to the job or excuse me, fit the job to the worker so that maybe they have tools rather than having to lift it themselves.

- Ah, okay.

What other types of things do you work on with employers, companies?

- Making sure they're using respirators correctly, because if let's say you're working around a lot of dust, such as, you know, with concrete that gets into your lungs and can cause issues.

So how to wear a respirator correctly and when to wear it.

If an employee's gonna remove guards from a machine, they have to reach in and tighten a belt or tighten a chain or adjust something, making sure that equipment's locked out so that when they reach into it, there's no way it can start up and say, amputate a hand or something like that.

- How do you reach out to a business?

Now I, that, you know, you create a product, you manufacture a product, you would think I know how to do this, okay?

I've run my company, I know how to do it safely, but maybe they're not doing it safely or they could use different ideas.

How do you get into the mind of that owner to say, "Hey sir, ma'am, maybe you ought to think "about doing it differently."

- Absolutely, because I come from more of a background of having done it, I understand that when business owners are trying to bring in a new machine or build out a process, that usually have a pretty instinctive way to do it, but how to teach your employees to do it safely, developing that procedure, so everybody's not just doing it their own way, in a way that's gonna get them injured, that's a big challenge.

So how can we make your business more efficient is the way I actually go about it, with a business owner typically.

- Ah, so when you talk to 'em, you can say, "I can help you better your bottom line "or reduce costs of injuries by providing this service."

- Exactly.

- And some of it is required, is it not, the safety training?

- It is.

OSHA or in Minnesota, we're under Minnesota OSHA, a lot of regulations that they're very deep and complex.

I try and avoid pushing regulations onto businesses and rather show them the right way to do things that does cover the regulatory bases, but it's not just checking a box, it'll make them a better business overall.

- Huh.

And how many businesses, companies do you work with, just in Albert Lea?

- Well, since I'm still fairly new as a business, I'm still in the about twenties or so for clients, but looking to grow from there and expanding what we do.

- Okay, and you have, there's so many different companies making different things.

You have qualifications on some of those things, but you've hired somebody else to help with even more complex business situations.

- Absolutely.

So my background is mostly in manufacturing and emergency response.

I brought in a business partner, Amanda Lorentz, that she has about 20 years of experience in construction, the nuclear industry, oil and gas refineries.

So really broadening the industries that we can serve and what type of consulting we can do.

- Do some cities have additional safety requirements?

- Not so much city specific, unless it's specific to a code such as, you know, following NFPA fire codes or something like that, which we don't get into very much.

- I would imagine that once in a while you are called in because something bad happened or unfortunately, you're brought in after the fact to try to prevent something bad from happening again?

- Typically if, if we're going into prevent that from happening again, absolutely.

I've had clients that reach out that that's exactly what they're trying to solve.

If OSHA's just come into your facility, inspected you and given you a big fine, it's kind of too late to call me and really get that fine reduced or eliminated or represent you.

I want to be proactive and help you prevent those types of fines and situations.

- Okay.

So would small and medium sized businesses be the most likely to take advantage of your, I worked at a big electric utility years ago and they had safety officers, they called them, that were employees that worked in the facilities.

- Absolutely, small and medium sized manufacturers and industrial businesses.

We can manage all their safety programs as much as they need, or as little.

When you get into the larger like multinational corporations, we're able to provide training that a lot of times their safety manager can't do such as offering HAZWOPER training, such- - Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what was that now?

That was a big word.

- HAZWOPER.

HAZWOPER is hazardous waste operations and emergency response.

So that's a hazmat response team such as some businesses locally have, particularly if they have anhydrous ammonia.

So we train them to suit up and respond to an emergency if there's a chemical leak, for example.

So with larger businesses where their safety manager may not have those qualifications, that's where we can step in, even with the largest manufacturers and help them.

- And what about finding the right equipment or gear?

Do you put that stuff in, or point them to where they can get what they need?

- Absolutely.

Over my career, I've worked with a lot of vendors.

We're starting to sell some equipment ourselves.

Like we sell Multi Dynamics fall protection equipment.

But if you're looking for, you know, HazMat equipment, PPE, I usually know not only the right company to buy from, but the rep that will take care of exactly what you need.

- What was the first thing that you're making fall prevention?

- Fall protection equipment we sell, for where Malta Dynamics is the name of the company.

- What does that mean, fall?

- So like harnesses, like if you have employees that work on a roof doing roofing, they have to be wearing a harness.

And that harness has to have a lanyard that connects them to an anchor.

And then you have to have an anchor that's gonna hold their weight if they fall over the side of the building.

Because when you fall, when that anchor catches you, there's about 10 times your body weight on it.

So if you weigh, you know, 200 pounds, there's easily 2000 pounds of force on that anchor.

So if you just tie off to, let's say a pipe, you're gonna keep falling.

And that pipe is now gonna break and probably come down on your head.

So making sure you have the right equipment, not just the right procedures and that's where the fall protection equipment comes in.

- Oh my gosh.

- Yep.

- What are some of those other things that people might not be thinking about as far as safety, even around the house?

- Well, around the house, simply for one thing, looking at what you have in your house for like natural gas and things like that, that can go wrong, making sure you're changing your, on your house, like your dryer, making sure you don't have a lint buildup in your dryer lines.

'Cause that lint, I tell you when I was a boy scout and we used to have competitions if you could start your fire with one match and all the kids that had, we had lint in our pocket, we'd pull it out and that was magic for starting fires with one match.

But it's also magic for starting your fire in your basement, you know, coming out of your dryer, so.

- Is it surprising to you that there's, when you come into a business, are many of 'em just not prepared when you do a initial audit that surprises you?

- Absolutely, and I wouldn't say it surprises me.

It's when you start a business, you have a lot of struggles, a lot of things on your shoulders to solve.

A lot of businesses kind of start as a one man band.

That's how I watched my father start his CNC machine shop.

I was one of his first, probably three employees running the CNC machines.

And you gotta start from somewhere.

And that safety culture comes along the way that you have to build.

So it's not, it's not intuitive for most business owners, which is where we come in to help drive that culture.

'Cause if your employees don't feel safe, they're gonna tell their friends and people aren't gonna apply with your business.

So as you build your business, it becomes even more critical to focus on that.

- Who are your mentors or where do you get your updates on safety training?

- Well, I follow a lot of periodicals.

I'll attend trainings.

For example, within the last couple years, I've become a authorized OSHA instructor, which involved two weeks of training.

And to even get in that you have to have five years of experience as a safety professional.

So that allows me to do OSHA 10 and 30 hour classes.

I've attended the National Fire Academy a number of times for advanced trainings.

Anywhere I can go where I can get that advanced training and especially learning to make training fun, 'cause that's what we focus on is creating that engaging fun training, where we actually do things that would be considered play to learn.

- Okay, and these things you train, do they end up going in manual like operation manuals?

I know my son worked at Menards in the big warehouse for a while and they had all their, that safety stuff was in manuals.

- Part of what we do is developing those procedures and developing those manuals, yes, that's definitely part of it.

- But it wasn't fun, I don't think you would've said!

How in the world could you make safety training fun?

Give me an example.

- Well, let me give you yeah, an example is Ventura Foods is one of my favorite clients to work with.

Last week, we did some HazMat training.

We had the guys dress out in Level A hazmat suits with the SCBA, SCBA, self-contained breathing apparatus.

So like what firefighters wear into a burning house, for example.

And then a Level A HazMat suit is a HazMat suit where you're fully encapsulated.

Everything is, you're zipped in, the tank is inside the suit and everything.

So as you can imagine, it gets hot, it's hard to communicate, it's stressful, you're kind of in a confined environment.

So if you're claustrophobic, if you're not used to that feeling, it's intimidating.

You don't have the dexterity because you got great big gloves and a suit and it's hard to move.

So for example, we played Slap Z, which is a card game.

Had four guys around a table and play a card.

And so the guys are in their suits getting used to breathing in an SCBA in the suit, fogging up, so it's hard to see, but they're having fun.

They're doing it in a way where they're not thinking about this like a technical skill, but it's a competition, they're having fun.

- Ah, okay.

- Put together Legos.

So we'd have somebody outside the room with the diagram of what the Lego toy has to look like.

And two guys racing to put their, you know, they have a bunch of Legos in front of 'em and they have to use like their phone or two-way radio for communication to figure out what that should look like.

So they're having fun playing, putting together Legos.

- Good ideas!

- Thank you.

- I like those very much.

Brad Kramer, this has been very interesting.

Thank you for joining us.

- Thank you very much.

- And best of luck on your growing business.

- [Brad] I appreciate it.

(bright music) - The Austin Area Chamber of Commerce helps the businesses in the Austin area as their needs arise, but they do much more than that.

Here today with us is the President of the Austin Area Chamber of Commerce, Elaine Hansen, welcome, Elaine.

- Hi.

- Hi.

We know about chambers from business event, business after hours, you hear about.

Not just in Austin, but elsewhere Chamber of Commerce.

What are some other things that chambers do besides those profile events like, well the parades, fourth of July parades and so on.

What other things do chambers do?

- Well, our mission is to build, promote and advocate for business in the Austin area.

And our membership includes people as far away as Winona, Owatonna, a few in Northern Iowa, Albert Lea and other communities, as well as Austin.

And a lot of people aren't aware of the advocacy work that we do, which is a major part of the work of a Chamber of Commerce.

And that's representing business needs in working with elected officials at the city, county, state and federal level.

So when big issues come up, we want, number one, to make our members aware of what's going on and look for their support and idea and concerns and take those forward then to the elected officials.

- Are you able to share an actual example, a real world example- - Absolutely.

- Of how that works?

- Absolutely.

This year, one of the big ones was here in the state of Minnesota working to encourage the legislators to get the unemployment tax replenished, that fund replenished, because it was completely wiped out because of COVID.

And then we borrowed money from the federal government to continue to make unemployment benefits available to employees who were laid off or whatever due to COVID.

But it took away all that we had in there.

And so we really pushed both the House and the Senate and the governor to get that done.

And the way we do that is working with the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, who we are members of.

- The state one, the one in the state, okay.

- Right.

And then all of our partners across the state reaching out and letters, phone calls, emails to those elected officials, a lot of conversation with our local representatives, Senator Gene Dornink and Representative Patty Mueller to say, "We need this to happen."

Because if we, if they would have gone ahead and replenished it, because you know, they have almost $10 billion in surplus.

So you got a lot of money sitting there.

Why not pay the bill?

If they would've paid it by March 15th, we would've avoided any interest payments back to the federal government, but they didn't get it done till the end of April.

So unfortunately, we paid $12 million back to the federal government in interest payments when we had that surplus.

So it was a really hard thing.

And we tried to make sure our members were aware of what was going on and how it would impact 'em, because if they had not got that replenishment done at all, businesses would've been facing a double digit increase in their unemployment taxes, which as a business, then you look at, am I gonna lay somebody else?

Am I gonna be able to hire somebody?

What's that gonna mean?

And it was a really difficult situation.

- Wow.

- Unfortunately, yeah.

- Oh, go ahead.

- And so fortunately they did get it done, but not until the end of April.

So again, we had to pay out that $12 million in interest, which could have gone to a lot of other programs and projects in the state of Minnesota, but so much, it's done.

But the other part is that DEED had already billed businesses for their unemployment tax.

- Department of economic- - Department of employment and economic development.

And so what happens now is businesses already had to pay in their taxes, their first quarterly payment.

So now there's a credit and, you know, kind of some messiness.

It also meant DEED had to bring on a few extra people to deal with processing that.

So there were a lot of additional expenses associated with not getting that work done in a timely manner.

So it was a frustration, but.

- Eventually it came out okay, and government is always, is not the most efficient ever.

- Right, right.

- Depending, doesn't matter really when or who.

- And one of the other big things is this year was supposed to be a bonding year.

So because they didn't get their work done with the bonding bill, then specifically here in Austin, it means we didn't get that 14 and half million dollars for the wastewater treatment upgrades that we need to make as mandated by the state, so it's a hard thing.

- And I know that you, how does the city, I know the city is pushing when they have initiatives, but that's sort of different.

Do you work with the city when you're the chamber?

Or how does that work?

- Absolutely.

So I attend many city council business meetings, whether it's for budgetary projects or other things.

Last year, Kristen Olson, who's our community concierge, and I went to her at the work session when they were looking at the development of the property where the old YMCA was at, because as from the business side, we were very interested in having that be a market rate facility, because there was a proposal to make that an affordable housing development.

And, you know, from where we're at, we really are in need of that market rate housing.

So we presented that case on behalf of our members about how that could really help to advance our entire community.

And so big win that we got to have the market rate housing going in there, that's the mill and main project.

- And those are things the chamber does that most of us wouldn't ever dream that you're that in behind the scenes because every business wants project A or B, but they don't have the time to spend talking to people and getting it done.

- Right, yep.

- So that's the role of the chamber.

- Right, right.

And also working with both the city and the county on different projects, one of them is to encourage them to continue the housing abatement project.

So encouraging people to build homes.

- Oh, Mower county, the county.

- The county, but there's also a city component to it as well as a school district.

So we work with all those entities to make sure that they all know that it's important and how it will impact our overall economy, so.

- I was listening to economic development person in Austin recently, and there's a move afoot to try to make Austin more acceptable for new businesses when they come to town to find enough employees, find enough good workers.

I know that Nu-Tek is a big, beautiful new facility being built, ramping up here in Austin.

And they're looking for workers.

Is that a problem, the shortage, is there a worker shortage?

- Absolutely.

You know, those three big things that come up at every meeting, Eric, are housing, workforce and childcare.

So those three big factors all tie together and really impacts our overall economy.

And so we work together.

The Development Corporation of Austin is a very close partner of ours.

We work with them on a number of things, as well as all the other entities in town to look at that.

And we are planning to do, to convene a meeting the end of July, to talk about housing.

You know, what's the catch, what's keeping us, what are the challenges, opportunities, and are there things that we can maybe move to help others come in to build, developers?

Is there a way to help a local group of developers to put up some additional housing and just look at the overall picture?

The Counselors of Real Estate were commissioned to come to town to do a study of our housing.

And from that report, there's a lot of information that we've been pulling out and meeting with different groups to try to look at our housing shortage, how can we improve things.

So it takes a lot of creativity, a lot of bringing people together.

And that's a big part of the chamber's work, is to convene meetings and bring people to the table to talk about how can we move this initiative forward, - And competing against other communities, I guess?

- Oh, absolutely.

There some of that that goes on for sure.

But it's exciting.

I really enjoy the part where we can make a difference and move things forward for business.

The other part is helping that new business that comes to town, helping to get integrated into our community and know people and introduce them and give them the support of the chamber to help tell their story.

We also do that with our members who have been involved with the chamber.

We're 80 years, 80 years proud.

So actually, 82 years proud, but you know, it's fun.

- How does Austin the chamber interact with Rochester, the bigger community?

How does their, what they do impact Austin?

- It does impact us, but we really try to look at Austin as our community and not necessarily compare us to Rochester because we aren't.

And so what are the unique things that we can do to help move Austin forward?

And I think it's very exciting when we look at what's going on in Austin in terms of agricultural, biosciences, and just amazing research going on at the Hormel Institute, just, it's fabulous.

And so we have so much to be proud of and we just really need to promote that Austin's a great place to live, work and do business.

- I meant more the, as they grow, will there be more stress on our housing?

Are people living here that work there?

- Absolutely, absolutely.

There already is that stress on our housing.

When we look at the number of people that are moving to Austin, as well as remote workers, with a change of things, we have people that are coming out of the Metro area who want a simpler life.

And so they're looking at Austin as a great place to live because of our proximity to other things, yet the great small town feeling you get here.

- You know, I saw that on a presentation at a meeting and I was astounded that it said like 150 or something like that, people work in Minneapolis, not remote and live in Austin.

- Right, yeah.

- So they drive back and forth.

- Right.

And there's more and more people that are working remotely, 'cause maybe they have to be in the office in the cities one day a week.

Well, living in Austin makes it pretty easy for them to do that.

You know, we have a great road system and it's easy to get there, great internet.

And it's only getting better with the expansion of fiber service throughout Austin, so.

- What's the biggest challenge?

- The big three, workforce, housing and childcare, you know, and there's so many other things.

- You mean the availability of?

- Yes.

- There aren't enough childcare- - Yes.

- Places for the workers or the people?

- Right, yeah.

And you know, that's a big conversation that we're having with people at the state level because they came through and made a bunch of changes and requirements to what it takes to run an in-home daycare and about in the last 10 years, well, when they first made the changes, we lost about 70 in-home daycare providers.

- Oh wow.

- So it's really made a big impact.

So just looking at, what else can we do?

How else can we arrange things?

The childcare issue has also impacted the workforce and that some people that traditionally maybe were a two income household, one person is now staying home because lack of childcare.

So big, it's big, big stuff.

But the great thing is that people are committed to making a difference.

So if we continue to work together with the end goal that we're going to move forward and make things better, we can do a lot.

- That's wonderful.

It's exciting to hear.

- Yeah.

- Thank you so much, Elaine, for joining us, Elaine Hansen.

- Thank you very much.

- From the Austin Area Chamber of Commerce.

And that's it for today.

Thank you very much for joining us here "On Q" for KSMQ Public Television.

I'm Eric Olson, we'll see you next time.

(bright music) (upbeat music) (bright music)