How to stop the little things biting you in the a**?

[pelu]

Frustration is starting to set in.

Imagine you have every thinkable safety precaution in place.
Weekly safety meetings.
Pre-shift safety talk.
Departmental safety meeting.
STOP program, everyone is encouraged to stop unsafe acts even if it means shutting down the operation.
Recognitions programs, where the best safety suggestion or safety action is awarded.
Safety bulletins, learning from others.
Pre job analysis, what can go wrong.
Safety tours with the crew.
Audits and endless audits.

And you're doing a pretty good job, looking at the statistic. But then it happens!
That one little thing. Rarely a new hand, mostly experienced and accountable guys. Someone slipping off a ladder, cut in the face eventhough both faceshield and goggles are in place, crushed finger when cleaning up workshop...the list goes on.

How do you stop the little things from biting you in the ass?

 

[owg]

Based on studies many years ago at Western Electric, it is the ongoing change of programs and environment that gets peoples' attention and makes them work safer and better. It wasn't the better lighting, or the soothing music, or whatever, it was knowing that someone cared. So change the meeting formats, change the safety bulletin supplier, etc. You have to keep showing them you really care.

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[tomwalz]

We found that accidents tended to occur when doing unfamiliar task. Spring clean up, painting, etc.

We have special lectures and special training for any time we do unfamiliar tasks.

Also we tell folks that we don’t think it is good business to kill employees. Everyone agrees with that. Then we tell them that since it is not good business to kill employees it is also probably not good business to get employees hurt. Somehow this gets a safety point across and they really realize that we care.


Thomas J. Walz
Carbide Processors, Inc.

http://www.carbideprocessor.com

 

[pelu]

Thank you guys for replying, I appreciate that!

I think owg has a point there when he says that, in my own interpretation, showing your commitment on saftey will reflect the safety outcome of the workers. Fair enough! People don't care how much you know until you show them how much you care.
And like tomwalz, we also take our staffs safety very serious and wants everyone go home to their families as they left home. Zero tolerance on accidents.

It still amazes me that it is not the high risk, very complicated, simultaneous operation where people get hurt. It's the every day jobs. Things that has been done a thousand times. How do you keep people "on their toes" regarding safety even during the normal tasks?

 

[tomwalz]

We engineer safety in. I know it is a trite answer but any repetitive, ongoing task needs to be made more efficient. Make safety an essential part of the engineering design.

Washington State has a really good, free safety and health consulting service we have used several times.

Use fewer people. In Washington State you are heavily penalized for adding employees but there are tax benefits for buying equipment.

Use the right employees. Some employees have more accidents than others. One reason sometimes given in the studies is that employees who get injured repeatedly have a need for recognition.

Do drug and alcohol testing. Be careful on this. Several years ago I announced that we were going to do it and lost three key employees. They just happened to quit shortly after the announcement.


Thomas J. Walz
Carbide Processors, Inc.

http://www.carbideprocessor.com

 

[safetydan]

Your problem is the same that just about every one of us in the safety profession deal with continuously. How do you keep people from being stupid? I have never been a big supporter of behavior based safety principles. However, some of their concepts do work. I think the greatest professional challenge is changing the culture of an organization into one where safety is the top priority. It sounds like you have good safety programs in place, and a management team that takes safety seriously. Do you know if your employees take safety seriously? Do you have an employee safety committee? Some places like to have the best employees and model workers participate in their safety committees, but I take the opposite approach. I want the worst and most undisciplined employees on my committee because then I have a better understanding of what is going through the average workers head when they are on the job every day. Once the rest of the workers see that the guys who are the most safety unconsious, acting safely, then they tend to buy into our safety programs.

The entire process takes time, a LOT of it. Try to not get discouraged because of one or two bad months, just do some analysis, determine the root causes, and implement changes throughout the facility. Good luck.

 

[ahung]

According with our experience in some cases people have an accident because they have an excesive confidence (exceso de confianza). In our power plant work 27 people. We have an excellent record: Five (5) years without lost time accidents, well one day a gas turbine operator go to the machine to open manually a valve. The valve have a chain system to close and open it, the operator pull the chain but he forgot use gloves and one finger of his right hand was broken because he introduce his finger into a chain ring.
The results: One people injured and Plant Safety record finished.

In others cases the personal attitude is the key problem, many people go to work in our plant installations, they use personal protection equipment, follow the safety rules and make all activities following the correct procedures. But when labor day finish this same people get into the cars to back home and you can see in the majority of the cases they forgot put the seat belt before drive the cars.

Regards

Alberto J. Hung C
Caracas Venezuela

 

[chicopee]

Have you done an extensive analysis of the accidents? Go thru each record and tabulate days of the week ,time of day, calender months ,hours on the job when the accident occured, for each accident and determine trends. I did that for one company several years ago and noted Christmas time to be a problem period- concluded people had too many parties and probably showed up to work tired and probably recuperating from festivities at work therefore becoming vulnerable to accidents.