Traditional safety training focuses on ensuring that workers understand the workplace's hazards and perform their jobs in a way that minimizes risk to themselves and their co-workers. And, in fact, worker training should be the centerpiece of any health and safety program.

But there's another key piece that sometimes gets overlooked: supervisor training. Yes, supervisors get the same safety training that workers get. And that's the problem. Supervisors are not just like workers. Although they perform many of the same tasks that workers do, they also perform special safety-related functions. Or at least they should. As demonstrated by a new study from the U.S. insurer, Liberty Mutual Group, these functions are crucial to preventing injuries and minimizing the cost of injuries that do occur.

Thus, training your supervisors to carry out safety-related functions effectively has a direct and positive impact on how well your safety program performs and how much it contributes to your company's bottom line. Here's a look at what the Liberty Mutual Group study says and how to use the results to bolster the effectiveness of your supervisor safety training.

Why Supervisors Are an Underutilized Asset in Injury Prevention

Supervisors can play an important role in preventing injuries and minimizing injuries that do happen. Why? Supervisors are on the floor with the workers. As a result, supervisors are in the best position to observe how workers perform, determine when a worker is at risk and step in to help the worker before the risk leads to an actual injury (or before a minor injury becomes a serious one).

Unfortunately, in many companies, supervisors don't realize their potential for preventing and minimizing injuries. That's because early intervention isn't an inborn skill. The company must train supervisors to intervene early and help them develop the skills necessary to intervene effectively. But since few companies give supervisors this kind of training, they miss out on the opportunity to prevent and minimize injuries.

For example, workers often complain that supervisors don't really listen to them when they raise a health concern. When a worker raises such a concern, there may be an easy way to accommodate the worker and address that concern. But too often supervisors don't try to accommodate the worker at all. Thus, if a worker performing the same task in a cramped work space all day complains of back problems, the supervisor may simply send the worker to the nurse for medical attention instead of reassigning him to a different task or making adjustments to his work space to alleviate the problem.

Bottom Line: To contribute in a meaningful way to a company's health and safety program, supervisors need proper training on how to respond to workers' health and safety concerns.

Conclusion

Next week, in Part 2 of this series, we'll look at the Liberty Mutual study and the insight it offers on how supervisor intervention contributes to injury prevention.

SAXCIES PROFILE

Teresa Mackey, HSE Manager of Parkway Products, looking resplendent in white dress and silver Saxcie

WINNER FOR SAFETY PROGRAM OF THE YEAR:

Brought to you by:

Criteria: The Safety Program of the Year Saxcie is awarded to a company's health and safety program for excellence in one or more of the following areas:

• On-the-job safety training
• Off-the-job safety training
• Culture building and/or change
• Management buy-in
• Use of technology
• Maximization of employee involvement in safety
• Communication
• Awareness building
• Supervisoryleadership
• Performance measurement
• Auditing
• Accident Investigation
• Joint Health & Safety Committee Leadership
• Rehabilitation and Return to Work
• Any other field of safety program achievement

The Winner: Parkway Products, Inc.

Profile: Located in Atlanta, Parkway Products is a full service injection molding and machining facility with 12 injection presses, and a full machining center that includes dual spindals, CNC mills and lathes.

Parkway's commitment to safety becomes evident the moment you step through the door of its facility. Visitors and contractors aren't allowed on the production floor until they review and sign Level 1 and 2 EHS rules. All new contractors receive on-the-job safety training from the company on the first day of the job. New Parkway hires also get a complete safety orientation on day one.

Parkway treats safety as a team effort. Upper management has "bought into" safety 100%. Management staff participates in all safety programs and audits and is actively involved in delivering the safety message to employees, contractors and visitors. All employees are assigned individual and team safety goals. Parkway employees are organized into seven two-person teams, each of which is involved in monthly auditing and monthly safety meeting presentations.

Parkway has an active HSE Committee made up of management and production staffers who serve at least one year. The Committee meets monthly to review near-misses, audit findings, injury data (on those rare occasions when injuries do occur), plan safety celebrations, etc. 

Parkway offers an incentive program allowing workers to earn points towards gift certificates of their choice. Workers can earn points by engaging in activities such as participating in scheduled audits, presenting safety programs, housekeeping, submitting near-miss reports and doing volunteer audits. Two monthly recognition "traveling" trophies" - the Shining Star and Above and Beyond - are handed out to employees who work safely, as voted on by their peers.

Parkway's facility is certified with ISO 9001, TS16949 and ISO14001; it also holds a Tier
1 Automotive supplier Q1 rating.

Not surprisingly, all of these efforts have generated fantastic results. Parkway's OSHA recordable rate has been 0 for the past 2.5 years. Its last LTA experience was 12 and-a-half years ago. The facility has thus accrued 1,307,022 safe hours since then.

The Saxcies silver helmet for Safety Program of the Year will share space in Parkway's trophy case with other awards and recognitions, including:

• 2000 - 2006 Georgia Department of Labor Award of Excellence for Safety;
• 2004 Celebrated milestone of 10 yrs. and 1 million safe hours - Received congratulatory letters from Governor Sonny Perdue and Mayor Shirley Franklin; and
• 2005 Georgia Department of Labor - Commissioners Award.

To Teresa Mackey and all of her colleagues at Parkway Products, we at SafetyXChange offer you our warmest congratulations on a job well done.

POP QUIZ

Which Drugs Do Doctors Prescribe Most Often?

By Glenn Demby

Question: What kind of drug do doctors in the U.S. prescribe most often?

Answer: Anti-depressants.

In case you missed it, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control announced yesterday that of the 2.4 billion drugs prescribed by doctors in the U.S. in 2005, 118 million were for anti-depressants. The next most common form of drug prescribed was high blood pressure medications at 113 million prescriptions.

The good news about the increase in anti-depressant drug prescriptions is that it suggests the taboo surrounding these medications is on the wane. The bad news, of course, is that they make it clear that depression is a serious medical problem in this country. One in four adults will have a major depressive episode at some point in their lives, according to the CDC.

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