As I mentioned in the post earlier this week, shop floor safety has to be more than luck or more than thinking or believing that your company is safe. It is all about knowing that you are safe through measurable facts.
James Burk and Janet Hendry wrote an informative article in the June 2015 issue of Professional Safety magazine regarding shop floor safety. They emphasized the importance of having measurables to back up the theory of safety protocols. If you mandate that 100 percent of workers wear headgear on the floor and you don’t actually check to make sure that there is 100-percent compliance, then you could be just relying on luck. In other words, the safety of your company should not just be measured by the end result (no injuries or incidents in the last three months).
[Image by Flickr user EladeManu via a Creative Commons license]A recent article in Professional Safety magazine gives us some tools on how to properly assess safety protocols by monitoring and tracking execution, above and beyond just filling out necessary forms.
For this post, I will summarize the basic tenets of Burk’s and Hendry’s article to hopefully gain some insight, or to provide reminders, about how to have a measurable safety plan and protocol so your shop floor will not be just believed to be safe, but is safe.
Real Time Measurement
A safety protocol can be effective and would be effective if you can measure effectiveness immediately. Timing is truly everything. If you tell people to complete a task before the end of a shift, rather than saying, “You have one hour from the time you start your shift” to complete a task, chances are the safety protocol will not be as effective.
Burk and Hendry brought up an example of a company that had forklift drivers. The safety officer was confident that his company would get 100-percent compliance on pre-use forklift inspection forms. So what happened when the six driver were asked to produce completed forms? Only three of them had done it, which left the safety officer flummoxed. What was the difference in belief of compliance and actual compliance?
Timing. The drivers were only required to submit their inspection forms before they left for the day. There was not a call to do the inspection form before the driver actually started using the forklift.
That could have led to trouble with any of the three drivers who waited to fill out a form. Timing really does matter, especially if you want the forms to have the desired intention instead of being just a check-the-box busy-work activity.
Training Must Lead to Knowledge
It is one thing to have workers go through mandated training sessions or meetings to get the latest information about safety protocols and how to do a task properly.
It is another thing to actually have those workers be able to explain the safety protocols and what they do to ensure safety.
This is about specifics. When you train your employees about inspecting their safety footwear to ensure it is in good condition, for example, do you tell the workers specifically what to look for? If you were to go up to an employee randomly on the shop floor and quiz them about proper inspection of various safety equipment, would the employee be able to tell you in detail what they inspect and how to determine good condition?
With a proper assessment, you will be able to tell if your training is really being understood, and if the employees are just “going through the motions.” If a high percentage of workers are failing the evaluations, then maybe it’s time to re-assess your training and adjust it so you are not wasting everyone’s time. There has to be some comprehsnion and actual behaviors to support the training, or the training will essentially be in vain.
Dig at the Roots
With most processes – especially those that do not have active and frequent assessments or evaluations – there may be gaps where risk is heightened.
Addressing the risks is one thing; actually getting to the root of the problem is another.
Anybody can put a bandage over a gap temporarily. But your work does not stop there. This is where you need to do a thorough investigation into the process to figure out why the gap exists and find a real solution to closing that gap permanently. And once you do find the problem and address it, implementing regular real-time evaluations and assessments of the process will likely have the effect of keeping all employees engaged with the process and doing the things necessary to keep the gap closed.
Follow-up and Check Successes
Once you have gone through the process of addressing the gaps in the process and have taken action to correct those problems, it is very effective to make sure you do follow-ups and track that the corrective steps are being taken and executed and that all gaps in the process are completely closed.
From there, you can take regular assessments, gather data and actually make charts or tables that can visually show how much your overall safety has improved, and whether it is staying at a high level for a sustained period. It can also help make it easy to spot weaknesses and help you easily address those as efficiently as possible, both in time and resources spent.