Making the workplace safe

Safety professionals discuss ergonomics, incentives and what makes a good safety program

By Robin Lesht, Special to Plant Services

PlantServices.com

The word “safety” brings up a multitude of images. When we were children, one of those images might have been a grade school safety monitor. Adorned with a plastic orange belt and safety monitor button, the monitor’s responsibility was to tell students to slow down on the newly mopped floor or to scold them for running with scissors.

Translate this scenario into the adult world of manufacturing. The badge-toting individuals are replaced by highly trained, well educated safety directors and consultants. Their jobs are somewhat different — making employees comply with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards and keeping the workplace safe. 

However, safety doesn’t involve only wearing protective gear, complying with OSHA laws or watching safety videos; it’s an important dimension of the daily job.

Creating a safety culture

To create a plant culture that embraces safety, managers, safety directors and consultants work together to develop and execute suitable programs.

According to Scott Stricoff, president of Behavioral Sciences Technology Inc., (BST), Ojai, Calif., implementing a safety program at your plant involves three main components:

• Equipment safety
• Management and procedure
• Behavioral techniques

“It’s at the interface of those three things that you have problems,” says Stricoff. “If you have very good equipment, people need to use it properly. If you want people to do the right thing and follow procedures, then the rules that govern them can’t be poorly written.”

Historically, improving machine safety has been the focus of most efforts, according to Stricoff. “But in the last 10 to 15 years, people have put more effort into developing better systems and focusing on the behavioral side.”

When working together, the three aspects of safety coexist nicely. It’s when they don’t that problems begin.

Within each plant, the safety culture evolves and changes on its own, says George Swartz, safety director at Midas International Corp., Itasca, Ill. What works at one plant may not translate to all the company’s plants. It has to be a custom-tailored program that meets the needs of that specific plant.

The safety culture is a mixture of issues, new and old, that affect the workers  and managers. Ergonomics, behavioral techniques and incentive programs are today’s safety issues.

Pain in the neck: debating ergonomics

When OSHA finally announced its proposed ergonomic standard in November 1999 after 10 years of review, controversy erupted over whether or not it would be beneficial.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, 5.9 million people were injured on the job in 1998. Considering that 65% of of those injuries were attributed to repeated trauma, ergonomics is a substantial safety issue.

When the ergonomics proposal first came out, there was a movement against it, according to St. Louis, Mo.-based safety consultant Nick Shuput. People posted messages on the Web that blasted the ergonomics proposal. He worries that the debate conflicts with what people are actually trying to do — keep the work environment safe.

Problems and conflicts arise when trying to create and maintain an ergonomically healthy and hazard-free environment for workers, while not sacrificing productivity or coddling and questioning each specific employee.

Monitoring employees for the duration of their workday simply isn’t possible. “It’s difficult to monitor what kind of chair somebody is sitting in or repetitive stress from moving items from here to there,” Shuput explains. “The manager isn’t going to go around measuring somebody’s backside to determine whether or not the chair fits him.”

For the ergonomics program to be viable and to keep production going, an intrinsic effort is required, according to Austin, Texas-based safety consultant Coby Cullins. He encourages companies to conduct surveys in which employees circle the parts of their bodies that are in pain. Cullins agrees with Shuput that it’s not feasible to check  on an individual basis to make sure everyone is comfortable and that their jobs are ergonomically sound. Rather, he suggests using surveys.

“Ergonomics is, by definition, fitting the job to individual employees, but you can’t interview each employee,” says Cullins. “If you send out a survey and have it filled in, then you can analyze what the problems are.”

Swartz contends that safety programs should include ergonomics. When his Wisconsin plant experienced work-related injuries caused by poor ergonomics, he invested in no-slip mats, automatic boxing and machines with tilt carriers.

With the help of incentive programs, Swartz finds solutions for his safety-related problems. He even boasts that implementing new ergonomic safety policies raised productivity.

Rewards and incentives

Some plants give cash or gift incentives to employees who follow safety procedures or maintain low injury numbers. But safety experts debate whether these programs are truly beneficial. Many worry that the desire to obtain an incentive makes people more inclined to use false reporting methods.

“Incentive programs can really bite you,” says Shuput. “You have to be careful about the way you design them. Establishing goals for a safety program is one thing. But if you have a goal that seeks zero accidents, first, it’s not attainable. Second, you are setting the standard so high that it’s really going to hurt morale as well.”