Grounded: The EHS Podcast

Is AI making safety pros sharper or lazier? Zach Granzow shares how EHS professionals can use AI without outsourcing their judgment.

In this episode of Grounded: The EHS Podcast, host Morgan Serrano sits down with Zach Granzow, Safety Manager at Mobile Track Solutions. Zach went from planning a career in dentistry to reading all of 29 CFR 1910 for fun, and today he’s chewing on one big question: how do we use AI in safety without letting it do our thinking for us?

What You’ll Learn

• Why AI can speed up your work and quietly weaken your critical thinking at the same time
• The QBCA (Question, Verify, Challenge, Apply) framework Zach built from the familiar Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle
• Where AI genuinely helps in an incident investigation, and why Zach still heads to the floor before he opens his laptop
• How smart glasses could help train new welders by showing exactly what they see under the hood
• Why robot welders didn’t cost a single welder their job, and what that says about AI and safety roles
• The translation slip that almost derailed a three-language safety talk
• Why showing up as a colleague is what gets people ready for change

Zach Granzow is the Safety Manager at Mobile Track Solutions, a heavy equipment manufacturer based in Elkader, Iowa. With a background in chemistry and biochemistry, Zach originally planned to serve in the Navy and run his own dental clinic, but life had other ideas. He started as a quality control analyst in animal pharmaceuticals, moved into chemical manufacturing, where he managed operations and helped turn plants around, and then made the leap into safety full time. Since then, he has worked across chemicals, cheese manufacturing, and heavy equipment, with experience spanning HSE, root cause analysis, and manufacturing operations.

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Episode Resources:

• Zach Granzow on LinkedIn
• Mobile Track Solutions Website
• Morgan Serrano on LinkedIn
• YellowBird Website

Grounded: The EHS Podcast is handcrafted by our friends over at: https://www.fame.so/

Why is safety training forgotten? Linda Tapp, past ASSP president, shares how EHS professionals make interactive training stick.

If you've ever run a training session and watched half the room check out before you finished the first slide, this episode is for you. In this episode of Grounded: The EHS Podcast, host Morgan Serrano sits down with Linda Tapp, President of SafetyFUNdamentals. Linda has spent more than 35 years working on one stubborn problem: how do you make safety training something people actually engage with, learn from, and carry back to the job?

What You’ll Learn

• Why safety training gets forgotten the moment people leave the room, and how “sneaky training” keeps lessons alive on the job
• How a skeptical room of arms-crossed supervisors became Linda’s proof that participation beats lecturing
• How to meet small companies where they are
• What it really takes to move away from the “safety cop” approach and build relationships on site
• The networking habit most people skip, and how a few notes on a bathroom mirror grew into a community of women in safety
• How far PPE fit has come for women, and why better fit benefits everyone
• Why the Workers' Memorial left Linda angry, and how it can sharpen your own why

Linda Tapp is President of SafetyFUNdamentals and a former president of the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP), where she was the tenth woman to lead the organization since its 1911 founding. With more than 35 years in occupational safety and health, Linda has trained teams across industries and countries, and her work centers on one stubborn question: how do you make safety training something people actually engage with, remember, and carry back to the job? She is known for active, participatory training methods, has written books to help other professionals use them, and regularly speaks on training, leadership, and professional development. A longtime solo consultant, Linda also helps safety professionals develop their own written content to build credibility and grow their careers.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube Podcasts. Instructions on how to do this are here.

Episode Resources:

• Linda Tapp on LinkedIn
• SafetyFUNdamentals Website
• Morgan Serrano on LinkedIn
• YellowBird Website

Your job is to slow everyone down. You make the call no one thanks you for, you flag the risk that gets overruled, and you keep showing up anyway.

Host Morgan Serrano isn’t a safety professional, but has spent five years working alongside the people who are. Grounded: The EHS Podcast is about what doesn’t make it into the safety binder: the pressure, the pushback, the loneliness, and the deep care that drives people in environmental, health, and safety work.

If you’ve ever felt like the only one who cares, this show is for you.

New episodes every other Tuesday. Follow and subscribe now so you don’t miss the first one.

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