Putting People First

Reject competing priorities

For Jason Ward, any discussion of in-plant safety starts and ends with core values. “We didn’t have core values until about a year ago,” Ward says of California TrusFrame (CTF), where he is vice president of human resources and safety.

The lack of clear values was problematic, because it meant safety was relegated to just one of many competing priorities. Production targets, costs savings and other business goals sat level with safety—all were equally important to keeping CTF going strong.

The “safety first” motto just isn’t practical, Ward argues. If the priority is keeping everyone safe all the time, then everyone should stay home, cocooned in bubble wrap and wearing a helmet. Complete safety doesn’t result in assembled trusses (or any other product or service, not to mention participation in any human activity).

Thinking of safety as a value, argues Ward, puts it in a context where it’s always important but never exclusionary. It’s an ever-present part of what you do, rather than a goal that pushes everything else aside. “If you attack it as a value and tie it in with production,” says Ward, “you’ll be successful. At least, we have been at California TrusFrame.”

Get everyone involved

Building employee buy-in is critical to approaching safety as a company value and as an aspect of company culture. Ward points out that, ultimately, it’s every employee having a personal commitment to safety that improves practices in a plant. Regardless of the rules you set, no one will wear safety gear “unless they want to. At the end of the day, they have to make the choice,” says Ward.

Choices are key in safety; simply following rules isn’t enough. Ward uses OSHA regulations as an example. “You can be 100% compliant,” he says. “That doesn’t mean you’re safe. Compliance is your baseline. There’s a whole world out there beyond OSHA regulations.” Setting safety rules and providing the means to follow those rules, like safety glasses or machine guards, is a good first step. However, as with any value you share with others, the goal is really to empower everyone to make good choices.

Ward explains that a good safety program is a grassroots effort that gives everyone responsibility. At CTF, he says, “at least half of the safety committee is non-management. It’s employees from the all departments.” Creating that team took some effort.

“You must market the safety committee,” Ward says. He began by sending out an appeal for volunteers to serve on the committee. The invite prompted immediate response, but only from three people. Starting slow is ok, Ward notes. The three people who got involved told their coworkers about what they were doing, and the next month 10 employees volunteered. Today, it’s considered a privilege to wear one of the blue vests that designate employees who serve on the safety committee.

Take the first steps

Even with the right people in place, safety can be a slow process. When safety is all about compliance, for example, it’s easy to buy a piece of PPE and move on. When safety is value that you live out every day and something you continuously work to improve, it’s not so simple. Ward remembers trying dozens of styles of safety gloves, looking for the ones that offered both adequate protection and enough comfort that employees preferred to work with rather than without them. “It took us about a month and a half to find what works,” he recalled. “And what works in northern California doesn’t work in southern California.”

A truly effective safety strategy must be plant-specific, but Ward does offer a few tips that can work just about anywhere.

• Ask for help. If you’re trying to figure out what you need to do to improve your plant, lean on your insurance providers for third-party inspections or recommendations on steps to take. Their financial incentives are aligned with your values if your goal is to keep your employees safe.
• Get your audience’s attention. Ward recommends the calculator developed for OSHA’s $aftey Pays program. A few seconds of data entry can give you a good sense of how the cost of any new safety initiative compares to the potential cost of an accident. If numbers won’t impress the people who need to get on board with your safety efforts, keep it simple. “Bribe them with lunch,” Ward suggests. Make involvement in safety planning a reward rather than a chore.
• Stick to your message. “Repetition is key,” Ward says. A month of safety meetings on a single topic—with a daily or weekly few minutes focused on a different aspect of that topic—can help reinforce a concept or help the lessons from a training session sink in. Ward suggests posting safety reminders in restrooms as well as break rooms or production areas—it’s one more place employees are sure to see the information again and again.
• Keep your actions in line with your values. Ward sees CTF’s standard disciplinary system as a last resort. Rather than issuing a verbal warning for safety violations and relying on the three-strikes write-up policy as follow-up, Ward starts with retraining. A safety concern isn’t primarily about an employee breaking a rule, he says; it’s about that employee failing to embody the company ethos and about other employees failing to hold that person accountable.

Keep things in perspective

Ward says that CTF’s shift of focus to core company values, the first of which is people, helps keeps everything the company does in perspective. “The idea is to have the employees’ best interests at heart,” Ward says. “If you’re focusing on the positive and the changes you can make before things happen, the faster you’ll see a change in your culture.”

Putting employees’ best interests first and focusing on accident prevention makes it easy to explain why production safety is so important. Ward isn’t shy about letting employees know that, as a last resort, he’d much prefer to fire them for safety violations than send them home missing limbs or in body bags—not only for their sakes but for the sake of their families, too. He says most people are very quick to take safety seriously when they’re reminded of family and thinking clearly about why safety is important.

In that frame of mind, Ward says, it’s easy to see that safety doesn’t compete with productivity in the plant. Instead, safety is an essential part of productivity. You need people to make a product. You need safe, healthy, fully-functional people to continue making a high-quality product. It makes sense for people to be the first of the company’s core values, says Ward. “People are what make your company successful. If you value people, you value their safety.”