Father’s fatal fall sparks passion for workplace safety
By Rhett Morgan of the Tulsa World   May 24, 2018

That led to the Oklahoma native’s association with Sospes Process and Safety Software, a mobile-based application that allows employers to submit real-time reports for such things as workplace injuries, close calls, security threats and substandard conditions.

Latin for safety, Sospes is based in Boulder, Colorado, and opened an office a couple of months ago in Tulsa at The Forge, a business incubator of the Tulsa Regional Chamber that is sponsored by Tulsa’s Young Professionals. Tom Carson is founder and president of Sospes, and Brothers is co-owner and vice president of business development.

“It is allowing the worker to become the eyes and ears of the safety program,” Brothers said. “Everyone becomes responsible for the safety of their environment.”

Sospes’ clients include general contractors, manufacturers, wastewater treatment plants, municipalities, and mining and chemical companies. In northeast Oklahoma, the software company’s customers have reported a 10 percent reduction in Workers’ Compensation premiums the first year, Brothers said. They also have witnessed a 504 percent increase in observation and close-call reporting, he said.

“If we can address an employee’s injury within 24 hours, we greatly reduce our costs, our direct costs of the injury,” Brothers said. “If an employee doesn’t feel like they’re being cared for, they start talking to people and they start talking to lawyers. That’s when you get into the hundreds of thousands of dollars of litigation. We want to 1. take care of that employee, but 2. we really want to understand what happened because we don’t want the next employee to be injured.”

A native of Cleveland, Oklahoma, Brothers obtained a degree in criminal justice theory at Seattle University and studied international business at Oklahoma State University.

“There’s something special about Oklahoma,” he said. “In Oklahoma, people trust who they can shake hands with. There are not a lot of companies out there who will come on site, shake your hand and give you a demo. They are not giving you on-site training.”