Driving workforce safety through consistent training

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com for more information. It is the 2026 Texas, Louisiana EHS Seminar and Industry Trade Show, and I'm so blessed and fortunate to be with Nina LeBlanc. Hi. Vice President Operations for Hask Louisiana.

So, Nina, this is a role you've taken on somewhat recently. Talk about your role and how's everything going? You know, I'm really excited. It's been a great opportunity with Hask.

So my new role really consists of making sure operationally that we are consistent. So HASC has been doing this for 30 years, over 30 years. And so we want to make sure that with our new locations, so in Louisiana specifically just in the last year, we opened three new locations, Gonzales, Brouillet, and LaFlaas. And then we already had our sulfur location.

So for us it's about bringing that consistency operationally in my new role, role, making sure not only that we are consistent across all of our locations, online as well via our live online proctoring, but then also that we bring our tier culture, trust, integrity, excellence, and respect into every aspect of our business nationwide. Makes so much sense, Nina. Thanks for hanging out with you. So, LaCasse has been expanding its reach, better to serve the Gulf Coast, which you mentioned.

Can you share some of the recent news regarding your locations and your services in Louisiana and what that really means to the contractors and really the operators as well. Yeah, absolutely. So for Louisiana, I know we talked about our three new locations. So really I'll start with our Sulphur location, which has been there the longest.

So we just opened a 9,000 square foot occupational health service facility So doing physicals DOT injury care everything for drug and alcohol testing as well as our training services But over at our three new locations we focus on clinic services health testing specifically and our training So what this means for our contractors and our operators, owners across the Gulf region and actually nationally, nationwide, is that we're able to provide consistency for those workers as they're transient from location to location.

They're getting the same quality care, same quality training, regardless of if they're in Louisiana, Texas, and nationwide. So very exciting. Also, what's probably more important is that we are the first that is doing everything in one system. So you can order your drug and alcohol, your background screens, your physicals, your online MEQs, your training.

Everything is in one system instead of opening nine different tabs to do the full contractor onboarding. So that is really exciting for everyone involved. And give us a quick value proposition there, right? I'm a contractor.

Why does that really matter to me? So it matters because of time, right? Onboarding. So the turnaround time from the time you hire someone, make them that job offer, to sending them for their drug and alcohol testing, get them trained all in one location, right?

You also have the exposure, right, of traveling from place to place, clinic to training to safety councils, to wherever you're trying to send them so that over-the-road exposure, if I can do everything in one place, or HASS can also come to you and do it on-site. So then you have really reduced your risk there by not having to have those people travel over in your hiring centers, at your contractors' hiring offices, or on-site at the different owner facilities. Thanks for that, Nina.

So we've got to look ahead a little bit on the calendar. You know, SCA, the Safety Excellence Awards, is just behind us. Incredible events. I want to dig into the future, though.

We've got some golf tournaments coming up. I want you to talk a little bit about that. There's so many premier events that Hask is a part of, right? Tell us what's happening.

So I'm going to brag specifically on Louisiana right now. So Haas, Louisiana, it's our first time to ever do golf tournaments in Haas, Louisiana. So our first one is coming up on August 10th in Baton Rouge area, so really supporting that Brule Laplace, I'm sorry, Brule Gonzalez location So registration already been over We almost sold out Still have sponsorships available but we excited about that on August 10th the other one that coming up as far as golf tournaments we all gonna do one now in the Sulphur Lake Charles area registration opens for that next week and then we have our contractor safety awards coming up in July and the Sulphur Lake Charles area first time it'll be over at the Golden Nugget this year so we're really excited to really enhance that look and feel.

Bring the contractors what they deserve. A moment to share their success by staying safe on those owner sites. And that's the inaugural event for the Lake Charles Contractor Safety Awards? So no, it's inaugural for our golf tournaments.

The Contractor Safety Awards for our Haas Sulphur location has been happening for years so we're just excited to bring some other best practices to that event from SCA. Gotcha. Okay, thank you. So look, beyond the golf tournament, HAS has always had a robust lineup of programming on the horizon.

I mean, what are some of those key upcoming events? We talked a little bit about that, but also what are some training initiatives coming down the pipeline for the rest of the summer or the fall? Yeah, so one more event that we have coming up is actually sooner than later before the other ones is our, we've got a amazing panel put together. Dr.

Heisler, our chief medical officer, along with an attorney that is over different workplace practices and also an adult learning doctor that's in adult learning that we partner with. So we have this panel that's coming up on June 23rd out in Mike Anderson's over in the Gonzalez area. Registration's open. We're almost full on that, too, so we're excited about that.

But really what we're going to be discussing there is translanguaging and what that means to our workforce, how we're opening it up to not just an English workforce. Safety is not proprietary. Safety is not just in English. So we want to really talk about what that means for both training and then also the incidents, injuries, what are implications if we only provide safety training in English.

So a lot of different things to talk about that day. We're excited about that. Very exciting. So, Anita, we're catching up here at the H&S seminar, which always brings together some top tier safety leadership We interviewed him here in this booth all day long including you Thank you for being here From your perspective what are some of the biggest takeaways or common themes that you hearing really on the floor this week Or just you being out and about in Louisiana and doing your thing?

What are you hearing out there specifically about the future of maybe workforce development and, of course, safety? Yeah, absolutely. So here at the conference, really, I would say there's several different common themes that we're seeing. One is definitely the multi-generational, right, that we have coming and exiting the workforce.

How to reach them. That's really the voice of the customer that we're hearing right now. Also that the bilingual trans languaging needing to have multiple dialects, multiple trainings, and multiple ways to access them. Using different tools such as AI to enhance creating those things.

And then just making sure that we're consistent across the board and making sure we're delivering and evolving as industry is evolving. It's huge. Well, look, Hask has always done that. And over our 30-year relationship together, we're very grateful for it.

We thank you so much for hanging out with Nick Magazine, Nina, and always great to have you. Look, if someone wants to find out more about Hask or the events, tell them where to go. So Hask events, so you can definitely subscribe for the newsletter. I would say that is commonly the best way to get our notifications.

So our market, we have an amazing marketing team that puts together all that information and sends it out on a monthly basis. And probably a weekly, just did you know so you don't miss it. You can check us out on Facebook, LinkedIn, all the different social media sites. Awesome.

Well, Nina, thank you for your time. We had a blast. You're welcome. Thank you.

It's out to come hang out. Thank you for listening to BIC Magazine's Inside Industry Podcast. Log on to BICMagazine.com for industry news and resources.

BIC Magazine's Inside Industry Podcast is brought to you by the BIC Alliance. BIC Alliance and its sister companies, BIC Magazine, BIC Recruiting, and IVS Investment Banking help industrial businesses grow through marketing and sales, hiring the right people, and merger and acquisition services. Visit BICAlliance.com for more information.