Construction-Bred & Suicide Prevention Systems
“Sheet metal is no place for a woman.”
I remember my dad saying this when I told him I wanted to take over the sheet metal business he and my mom owned.
The irony, right? He built the business with my mom - a woman.
And when I questioned him on exactly this - my mom, a female business owner, alongside him - his response was “Yes, but her focus is the office, she’s not out in the field. I see what the field does to women, and I don’t want this for you. You’re going to college.”
I wish I could say I was mad. I wasn’t. He was doing what he thought was right - protecting me.
In hindsight, I should have continued to push, but I didn’t. After a while, the same conversation gets old so eventually I moved on from asking the question.
What I didn’t move on from was spending time at the shop; after all, it was our family’s life.
To this day, if I close my eyes, I can still smell the shop and hear the sound of the metal being cut.
I can see my dad, alongside a few of his guys, loading the pickup trucks for 6 am jobsite drop offs the following day.
And let’s not forget the photos of half-dressed women hanging on the outside of filing cabinets; or overhearing the guys trade perverted, sexist jokes. And yes, it was degrading and as I got older, it was insulting, but I’d never give back what I gained from being around it:
How to use my voice;
How to demand respect;
And how to hold my own in rooms where I wasn’t expected to belong.
My parent’s 35 years in business shaped me; and I’m thankful for all of it. The good, bad and indifferent.
And like a lot in life, we tend to find our way back to where we’re meant to be.
No, I don’t own a sheet metal business, but I’m laser focused on taking the lessons I learned from these two great leaders - my parents - and create blue-collar workplaces that show people they matter. The end game: preventing suicide.
A few of my favorite lessons:
Working side by side with the guys so not to forget what a day in the life of a “worker” felt like.
Never asking an employee to do something they themselves wouldn’t do.
Eating lunch with the guys and sticking to the cardinal rule “no shop talk,” because this was break time.
Finding creative ways to keep the guys working when business was slow; and never laying a person off during the holidays.
Knowing every employee, and their spouse if they had one, by name.
Ensuring every single employee found the right fit in a new “home” when the time came for them to retire.
Back then, there wasn’t an official name, or description, for what my parents’ actions did, or were doing, for their people.
But today, I’d describe it as: offering protection from the everyday work conditions (workplace psychosocial risk factors) that quietly wear people down and contribute to anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts and suicides.
What my parents did was show their employees they mattered; that they saw them and that they were valuable.
They built what I call a “suicide prevention system.”
A workplace that protected their people long before crisis ever showed up.