Hi! My name is Jen Ruggerio. I spent 25 years of my life as a public educator, primarily at the high school level, teaching alternative and special education in the State of Maine. I loved teaching and especially loved the students I worked with. They were often misunderstood, misjudged, and at-risk for dropping out of school, much like I was as a teen. Most of my teaching years were spent at the alternative school I was lucky enough to attend during my senior year in high school. The compassion and dedication of the teachers there made such a difference and changed my life and I hoped to make a similar difference for the students in my classroom.
During the summer of 2021 I met Lee Ruggerio. His values and passions aligned with my own and we began our love story. He had been working in the entertainment industry for about 20 years and owned Rugged Labor, providing labor for behind the scenes work in the entertainment industry. I listened to him tell stories about traveling to different venues across the country and how frustrating it was to have inexperienced people as hands when trying to prepare for a show and of the many nights he stayed late to fix things that had been done incorrectly by others. His labor company trained its employees in a way that progressively taught folks the ins and outs of the business. Whether employees were new to the industry or had any amount of experience, everyone started in the warehouse and proved their knowledge before moving on to other venues.
When I moved to Las Vegas I found I was drawn to helping Lee train his new and existing employees. While Lee understood the industry and what folks needed to learn, I knew more ways to effectively teach them in a way they could comprehend.
The focus, first and foremost, was safety. Providing safety information to employees working behind the scenes in the entertainment industry was not only helpful, it was necessary. In the fast-moving world of live events there are many hazards from unloading trucks to working around forklifts and other heavy equipment, to building and taking down structures. No two shows are the same as creativity requires a unique build every time. Still, there are many tips and strategies that one can learn to avoid the many hazards. Both Lee and I became OSHA authorized trainers for General Industry to increase our knowledge and expand our ability to offer OSHA 10 and 30 for General Industry for the employees. Together we designed hours of curriculum in hopes to make a difference in the entertainment industry by providing quality training on specific topics within the industry.
Our next priority was the topic of work preparedness. This is an avenue that many believe is just common sense, but both Lee and I know that if it isn’t taught it isn’t common. Not everyone has had a role model in their lives who showed them how to be a good employee, so if we want to hire people with good work ethic, we must be willing to teach it. We included topics like punctuality, dressing the part, and getting noticed for the right reasons. The inclusion of work preparedness topics into onboarding training gives employees the tools to be their best selves in the workplace.
Once the foundational skills for safety and work ethic were laid, we began to develop training that was focused on warehouse skills. In the entertainment industry there are two entry level categories: depreps and shop work. Depreps are when all the equipment returns from a show. Trucks are unloaded and everything has to be taken apart and sorted. Shop work typically involves quality control. When items are returned to the warehouse they are sent to their respective departments and the items are cleaned, tested, and put back so that it can be used for the next client.
For those who had enough work experience in the warehouse and were ready for the next step, we developed our Prep training. Preps are a bit more complex as it requires reading plots, asking questions, and putting equipment together in the warehouse prior to load in at the show. The success of the show depends on a good prep so they require folks with more knowledge, experience, and a necessary level of confidence to ask relevant questions to get the job done.
Our experiences both onsite and in the warehouses led us to consider the impact of leadership on safety. There was definitely a connection between being a strong leader and safety on the job. It occurred to us that most people are promoted to leadership roles because they are great workers, not necessarily because they demonstrate leadership qualities. Unfortunately, many who are promoted are not successful in the role because leadership is not explicitly taught. We envisioned a leadership training that would teach specific skills that were practical and easy to apply at work. We teamed up with a professional from corporate leadership and together developed effective leadership training for three different levels of leadership:
Our hope in offering these leadership classes is to improve leadership and safety in the industry as a whole.
For the past year we have been teaching Forklift Safety Certification and Aerial & Scissor Lift Safety Certification classes. We started with in-person training local (Las Vegas) warehouses and for Rugged Labor employees. Our Forklift Training is now available online and we expect the Aerial & Scissor Lift Training to be online by the end of the year.
See why our OSHA-authorized safety and skills training is consistently rated 5-stars by crew members, supervisors, and companies nationwide.
Ready to train your team? Learn more about our On-Site Custom Training or Enroll in an Online Course today.
