Sometimes, the difference between safe and unsafe is the willingness of management to seek out the opinions of front line employees on the safety and health hazards of the job. Once you get opinions, you also need to be willing to put them into effect. That’s the lesson I learned.

Turning an Unsafe Situation Around

I work at a manufacturing company that produces wood and gas stoves, as well as fireplace inserts. Our employees handle a vast assortment of materials. Before our company established a safety manager position, we were well above the OSHA standards for accidents and injuries. We had 10 days of lost work and 539 days of restricted duty in 2004 alone. 2005 wasn’t much better.

Still, company management had always been safety conscious and knew that they needed someone to work solely on safety. So I was hired in Sept of 2005 as the Safety Manager.  One of the first things that I did was to make a point of being out in the warehouse every day talking to the employees. I wanted to know how they felt about all the injuries and what they would do to lower the injury rate.

My efforts were well received. There were many workers who felt that their concerns weren’t being heard and that the Safety Committee didn’t really know what was going on. Some felt frustration about their workstations and tools.

Working Through the Committee to Change the Safety Culture

I was given the freedom and authority to not only listen and spend time with the employees but also to make changes. At first, like all things new, there were a few who balked at changes. But when we had only one injury from September through December of 2005, it was a turning point. Some of the foot draggers started to get involved. We had senior management on our Safety Committee along with maintenance staff. That’s important because the Committee is where the decisions are made and the spending approved.

I also enlisted all the team leaders and trained them to become safety inspectors for their departments with monthly inspections on newly created safety inspection forms. The safety inspectors and I sat down and created these forms together specifically designed for their areas. We had a weekly production meeting where I gave out safety information about upcoming classes and would always end by asking this question:

“Are there any safety concerns that I need to know about that we have not already covered.”

We had a safety suggestion box but nobody used it. So I put up a board in the warehouse in a spot where everybody could see it and had to pass by. I encouraged employees to write on the board any safety hazards, concerns or suggestions they had, no matter how small. Little by little, the employees started speaking up at the weekly meetings, writing their safety concerns on the board, e.g., “light bulb burnt out” or “need to have a worktable lifted to the correct height,” etc. It was working.

Enlisting Management Support for Ergonomics

The management team was instrumental in always stressing safety and training. I began conducting training classes on ergonomics, Hazard Communication, MSDS, PPE, etc.  We added overhead cranes to lift and move cast iron and heavy metal fireboxes. We bought lift pallet jacks so that no employee had to bend to lift, as well as ergonomically sound new tools that made their jobs easier.

We have stretch training and mandatory stretch breaks mandatory as well as added incentives. I write a monthly “Did you Know” on subjects such as the right foods to eat, diabetes, dangers of smoking and overall health and safety. The company shut down for two weeks to make the production line leaner, thus eliminating employees to have to walk long distances to get material.

Conclusion

We reduced our 2006 injuries by 65%, out of work by 100%, and our restricted duty by 85%. This is all due to the management team, listening to what the employees had to say about their safety.

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