How One Leader Gets Thousands of Employees to Care About Safety
In high-voltage electrical work, a single mistake can be fatal. A momentary lapse in concentration, a skipped safety check, or a shortcut taken to save time can result in electrocution, severe falls from dangerous heights, or catastrophic equipment failures. The challenge facing any leader in this industry isn’t about creating more safety procedures; safety procedures are already well-established. The real challenge is finding ways to inspire thousands of employees, even those you’ll never meet, to take ownership of safety every day. That is what sets true leaders in the industry apart.
Karl Studer, President of Electric Power at Quanta Services, oversees electrical operations across three countries and manages teams working on some of the most dangerous infrastructure projects in North America. His division is widely recognized for implementing some of the most advanced safety procedures in the electrical industry. Still, Studer emphasizes that safety isn’t defined by safety principles and procedures, but rather whether workers trust that their leaders genuinely care about their well-being.
“It is essential for employees to believe that their leaders genuinely care about them, and any lack of sincerity is obvious,” Studer explains. “True intentions can be sensed from a mile away, so they cannot be faked.” This principle – that authentic concern cannot be manufactured – forms the foundation of his approach to safety leadership. In an industry where compliance-driven safety programs often feel like box-checking exercises, Studer’s method emphasizes human connection over rule enforcement.
The Story Method: Karl Studer's Approach to Safety
If you were to walk into a safety meeting led by Studer, you wouldn’t hear him positioning himself as the expert with all the answers. Instead, you’ll find him telling stories, often about his own mistakes and injuries. “I’m pretty sure I’ve broken at least one or two bones in every limb,” he says. “My fingers and toes have taken even more of a beating.” Rather than undermining his credibility, Studer uses this history of injuries as a teaching tool. Employees relate to someone who has made mistakes and lived with the consequences, not to someone who claims perfection from an office far removed from field realities.
The storytelling approach serves a specific purpose: creating an emotional connection to abstract safety concepts. Studer believes that storytelling is an important first step in any safety conversation, but making a genuine connection with the people doing the work matters even more. “It is essential to find a way to connect to these men and women in the field. Think of how they felt waking up at three in the morning, driving two hours to the jobsite, and explaining to their spouse why another afternoon at a kid’s football game will be missed,” Studer explains. “And if you reach them emotionally, the rest is just explaining why their safety is important.”
This method inverts the typical safety communication hierarchy. Instead of starting with rules and procedures, Studer begins with human stakes. He asks workers to think about their families, their partners on the crew, and their long-term health. “If you can make the why clear – the reason to go home to their family, the reason to protect a pole partner, the reason to slow down and plan the work – then the rest of the message is simply asking them to be safe,” he says. When framed this way, safety procedures stop feeling forced and instead become tools to protect what is truly important in this line of work.
The human-first approach to safety requires genuine humility. Studer is the first to admit that he doesn’t walk into a room to impress people or establish himself as the expert. “When I walk into a room, I spend most of my time figuring out why I am there,” Studer admits. “I don’t need the validation of being the smartest or most successful; I don’t need any of that” By entering the room as a learner, rather than an authority, it creates psychological space for workers to engage honestly, rather than complying with what is being said. This posture mirrors the very foundation of Studer’s safety philosophy; people respond to authenticity, not hierarchy.
Though Studer often jokes that his time in the field was short compared to the lifetimes many craft employees have spent building and maintaining power infrastructure, the experience remains central to how he leads. He refuses to let himself forget what it felt like to climb poles, work long hours in dangerous conditions, or make split-second decisions under pressure. The memory of his time as a skilled lineman allows Studer to speak in ways that resonate with crews who might dismiss similar messages from executives lacking firsthand field experience. In Studer’s view, humility, empathy, and lived experience aren’t accessories to safety leadership; they are the core of it.
Why Workers Can Smell Insincerity From a Mile Away
The electrical contracting industry has no shortage of safety programs, training requirements, and compliance frameworks. Yet accident rates vary dramatically between companies, suggesting that the existence of safety procedures doesn't determine outcomes. The differentiating factor, according to Studer, is whether workers trust their leaders' motivations.
“If you look at how others approach safety, they fail to connect with the human mind,” he observes. Safety programs that emphasize rule-following without addressing the human dimension often produce resentment rather than commitment. Employees comply enough to avoid getting fired, but they don't internalize the principles. The moment the supervision relaxes, shortcuts return.
The problem intensifies when safety messaging comes from leaders who "fail to admit that they don't need to be the one who knows it all." Workers immediately recognize when safety communications serve the leader's ego or the company's liability protection rather than the employees’ wellbeing. That recognition breeds cynicism, and cynical workers follow procedures only when watched.
Studer's approach centers on empowerment rather than control. "You're not there to just be right. You're just there to empower them to be right," he explains. This distinction matters enormously in practice. A leader focused on being right corrects mistakes and enforces compliance. A leader focused on empowering others to be right creates conditions where workers take ownership of their own safety and their crewmates' safety.
The emotional intelligence required for this approach - what Studer describes as “the ability to read a room and understand how to lead within it” can’t be reduced to a formula or captured in a training module. It requires genuine attention to the humans in front of you, awareness of their concerns and pressures, and willingness to address their actual experiences rather than idealized versions.
The results validate the approach. Under Studer's leadership, the businesses he manages have consistently performed at two to three times the rate of comparable operations within Quanta—a metric that reflects not just productivity but safety outcomes. When workers trust their leaders and care about them, they're more likely to speak up about hazards, slow down when conditions feel unsafe, and to intervene when they see coworkers taking risks.
The Broader Leadership Lesson
Studer's safety leadership offers insights that extend beyond electrical contracting. In any high- stakes environment where human error can have catastrophic consequences—healthcare, aviation, construction, manufacturing—the same principle applies: compliance-focused approaches produce compliance-level results, while human-centered approaches can create genuine commitment.
The challenge for leaders is accepting that authentic concern cannot be faked. Workers possess finely tuned sensors for detecting whether leaders view them as assets to be managed or humans to be valued. “They'd smell your true intentions a long way away," Studer warns. Leaders who view safety as primarily a liability management issue will communicate priority no matter what words they use. Leaders who genuinely value their workers' lives will communicate that too.
The storytelling method Studer employs isn't complicated, but it requires vulnerability. Sharing your own mistakes and injuries means admitting imperfection. Focusing on workers' human experiences—early morning drives, goodbyes to spouses, missed children's events—means acknowledging the real costs of the work rather than maintaining professional distance.
For Studer, this approach isn't a technique or strategy, it's an extension of how he views leadership itself. "If the leaders can just take a little bit and connect to any part of that," he reflects, "they’ll take it.” The connection comes first, creating the foundation on which safety culture builds. Without that connection, even the most sophisticated safety systems remain just procedures on paper, followed grudgingly when convenient and ignored when pressure mounts.
In an industry where lives literally hang in the balance, the difference between authentic and performative safety leadership isn't philosophical—it's measured in who goes home to their family at the end of each shift. For thousands of electrical workers across North America, that difference is shaped by a leader who understands that you can't fake caring, and you can't mandate commitment. You can only earn it, one honest conversation at a time.
