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f you saw a spill on the shop floor at work, would you clean it up, report it to a manager, or walk away and let someone else worry about it? The first two options are responsible choices, depending on the situation. Ignoring a safety issue,

even if it does not cause any harm, still can put you and your coworkers at risk. Employers of all sizes and around the world face challenges with tracking safety issues in their facilities and encouraging employees to speak up about them. Safety can be improved in some smaller firms by fos-tering an environment of open communication and teaching employees to recognize safety hazards. For larger, global companies, web-based software and mobile applications can connect all of the affected parties and streamline reporting and investigating procedures. The end goal in both scenarios is to be able to address accidents and near misses in order to create a safe working environment.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 2.7 million nonfatal workplace injuries were reported in the United States in 2014. In addition to the pain and potentially reduced quality of life for the injured employees, the compa-nies face costs from medical bills, property damage, workers’

compensation, overtime pay, fines, and litigation, notes Ken Mazon, senior application specialist for WorkplaceAware, a health and safety reporting solution. “Workers’ compensa-tion claims alone average about $5,000,” he says. “Most [US Occupational Health and Safety Administration] (OSHA) fines are about $10,000, although some can total hundreds of thousands of dollars.” OSHA estimates that US employ-ers pay a combined $1 billion each week for direct workers’ compensation costs, in addition to the costs associated with accident investigation, implementing corrective measures, lost productivity, repairing damaged property, and training replacement employees.

These results only consider the reported workplace injuries. Michael Scaletta, Chicago-area general manager for Equipment Depot, notes that employees at his company sometimes are reluctant to mention a safety hazard or accident that happened at a customer’s site. They fear that reporting the incident will hurt the customer relationship. However, 85 percent of the company’s injuries happen to field techs at customer locations, where the company cannot directly control the safety of its employees, he says.

The simple solution, Scaletta suggests, is to encourage feedback and maintain a positive approach to gathering

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By Jennifer Storelli

Technology encourages employees to promote facility safety

incident information. “I believe it really comes down to communication and fostering an environment that puts safety first above all other metrics,” he says. “Companies also must make the employees aware that they want to be transparent and that no one will ever get in trouble for reporting an accident or possible safety hazards.”

Putting safety first means encouraging employees to report both accidents and near misses, or situa-tions that have not yet caused any injuries but have the potential to do so. In his five years as a warehouse manager overseeing employee safety, Anthony Rera, CPIM, CSCP, CLSSBB, director of communications and marketing for the APICS Tappan Zee Chapter, has noticed that employees neglect to report near misses because they do not think they are worth mentioning. However, according to the ConocoPhillips Marine safety pyramid, for every 3,000 near misses or at-risk behaviors in industrial facilities, approximately 300 recordable workplace injuries occur. (See Figure 1.) In 2003, the Houston-based business conducted a study building on the 1931 work of H.W. Heinrich to demon-strate the ratio between near misses and serious acci-dents, according to OSHA. Such near misses, which included bypassing safety components on machinery or eliminating a safety step in the production process, are clearly worth talking about.

Rera recalls a specific near miss involving a truck driver and a forklift operator at a company warehouse. In that case, the driver thought the loading process was complete and disengaged the dock plate, triggering an all-clear green light on the dock and a red light in the warehouse. However, the forklift operator loading the truck was still inside the warehouse retrieving the last pallet. When he returned to the dock, he reengaged the dock plate to load his pallet onto the truck, triggering the dock light to turn

red and indicate to the driver he should not leave yet. However, the truck driver did not notice the light change and drove away with the forklift and its operator in his trailer. Fortunately, nobody was hurt in this instance, but the potential for danger was there.

Because the incident was brought to management’s attention, the company was able to conduct an investi-gation and add more safety measures, such as installing a dock-locking system and collecting keys from drivers who back into the loading dock. If the situation had not been reported, “the bigger risk [would have been] not finding and fixing the cause of the incident,” Rera says.

Chris Gab, engineering manager at plastic pallet and container manufacturer Rehrig Pacific’s De Soto, Kansas facility, echoes the importance of examining near misses. “We never see a near miss as a negative,” he explains. “It’s an opportunity to make an improve-ment before anything serious occurs. If we analyze our near misses, they can point to gaps in our safety processes or training. Dealing with an accident where employees are injured or equipment is damaged is far less productive than near-miss corrections.”

Technological advantagesRehrig Pacific sets the stage for safety at its De Soto, Kansas, facility with a comprehensive employee safety training program that includes classroom and pres-entation events, five-minute trainings called “Toolbox Talks,” quizzes, task or process audits, and job-hazard analyses. After more than 10 years of exceptional safety performance, plant managers realized that, if they wanted to maintain that record, they would have to focus on continuous improvement of the company’s safety culture, Gab says. In addition to accidents, the plant managers wanted to track near misses, which are leading indicators of safety improvement opportu-

SPEAK UP The success of any safety

program depends on the attitude of management.

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nities, he says. However, the company’s paper reports and limited computerized forms were not equipped to handle that, he explains.

“Those doing the work are the foremost experts in how the work is done and the risks in that work,” Gab says. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if a third-shift operator could text in a picture of an issue beyond his control to remedy?’”

Rehrig Pacific found this solution in WorkplaceAware, a health and safety reporting tool for computers and mobile devices. With the WorkplaceAware mobile app, workers using Apple or Android smartphones or tablets can submit a report that includes specific details about the near miss or incident, a picture, the time and date it was discovered, and the location of the issue, WorkplaceAware’s Mazon explains. Users also can view past reports they have submitted and receive updates about them.

WorkplaceAware has helped increase near-miss reporting in Rehrig Pacific’s De Soto plant, Gab says. “Our associates have varying levels of comfort with written communication, and, especially in a man-ufacturing plant, they may not know the names of equipment or be able to completely describe what they see,” he explains. “Pictures are more powerful than any description … Plus, it may take a few minutes to fill out a form, whereas the WorkplaceAware app enables report submission in seconds.”

Whistle-blowing fearsEven when companies work to foster an environment of openness and concern for safety, some employees still might be afraid to blow the whistle. In a survey of 3,000 UK employees, London-based law firm Slater and Gordon found that 1 in 10 people had suffered a serious injury at work, and 30 percent of those injured said they were blamed for the incident. Another 10 percent of those injured were warned their jobs would be at risk if they continued to report safety concerns.

Based on situations such as this, one-third of British workers are afraid to reveal illegal or dangerous activ-ities at their companies, according to another Slater and Gordon survey of 2,000 UK employees. However, 67 percent of those surveyed reported that they would speak up if they could do so anonymously.

The team at Philadelphia-based Transportation Resource Associates (TRA), which primarily offers guidance about complex safety, security, opera-tions, and maintenance issues in the transportation sector, kept anonymity in mind when designing its IndustrySafe Safety Management Software. “As long as an employee has internet access, he or she can use IndustrySafe’s public web forms to report workplace incidents that they witness, record observations, and report any hazards they may encounter,” explains Clare Epstein, a TRA vice president. “Our public web forms can be made available to an entire company via

Figure 1: ConocoPhillips Marine Safety Pyramid, 2003

1 Fatality

30 Lost workday cases

300 Recordable injuries

3,000 Near misses (estimated)

30,000 At-risk behaviors (estimated)

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Apparel factory workers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, learn to use the LaborVoices platform.

a simple web link, so no … username or password is required to use our public forms. Companies can even allow employees to report their findings anonymously via the public forms, if they wish to do so.”

Similarly, LaborVoices offers an anonymous griev-ance hotline through which employees can talk about their safety concerns. LaborVoices forwards general issue information to the individual’s employer or other stakeholders, but specific employee information is shared only if the employee allows it. “If there’s a specific case that needs to be dealt with, and someone wants to follow up, we take extra care to make sure the worker knows that he or she has to opt in to get that direct communication,” explains Kohl Gill, CEO and founder of the Sunnyvale, California-based company.

However, persuading employees to contact a third-party system has required some trust-building, Gill notes. LaborVoices shares information about its ser-vices with working communities in the United States,

United Kingdom, Turkey, Bangladesh, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Costa Rica, India, and China and encourages them to interact with its call-in system to participate in employee surveys and listen to labor information through its infocast tool.

“You can think of it as a lower-temperature inter-action,” Gill explains. “We’re not looking to interact with workers only when things are really urgent. … We’re aiming our interaction with workers at a little bit more of a casual stance, where workers can call at any time … for any issue … We found that that is very useful because it allows the workers to gradually build up a relationship with us as a system and company that allows them to surface issues that normally would be very difficult to talk about.”

Traversing language and distanceThe talking aspect of LaborVoices enables workers who are uncomfortable with writing to still give a report and voice their concerns, Gill points out. “The way we’ve built our interface for workers has, up until now, been entirely audio,” he says. “So, we’re aiming for workers who don’t necessarily have a smartphone [and] they aren’t necessarily literate, or at least not in a Western language, and so it makes sense to interact with them via audio.”

This feature was actually one of the reasons why Reliable Source Industrial (RSI) chose the system. “[One of] our goals in implementing the LaborVoices platform [was to] help design and implement a local language grievance hotline so that our local employees can immediately provide feedback or ‘raise a red flag’ if there was a concern at the factory operations level that was against our strict internal code of conduct or not in total compliance with our core values,” explains Ted Leung, chief compliance officer for the Taipei, Taiwan-based apparel manufacturer. The company has close to 10,000 employees in Shanghai; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Chittagong, Bangladesh; Hanoi, Vietnam; and Jakarta, Indonesia.

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Digital Exclusive: Visit the APICS magazine tablet app for an infographic about workplace safety. To access the digital exclusives, search for “APICS mag” in the App Store and on Google play.

In one of the first surveys through LaborVoices, RSI employees voiced concerns about the sanitation of the company-provided midday meal, and managers were able to quickly address the issue through local factory team meetings. “Immediately thereafter, our local factory management team began the process of investigating and conducting a root-cause analysis of the employee feedback and learned that our third-party foodservice company providing our midday meal had been lax in its hygiene and food-safety-handling proce-dures,” Leung explains.

“Our local health and safety manager worked with the owners of the foodservice company to upgrade and strengthen the company’s standard operating proce-dures and provide additional training to strengthen and reinforce safety protocols,” Leung says. In turn, the local team began inspecting midday meals and made unannounced audits at the foodservice company’s facilities to review handling, preparation, cooking, and transport procedures. Lastly, RSI followed up with employees to provide feedback and monitor the progress of changes.

These actions showed employees that their feedback and concerns were being taken seriously, Leung says. In addition, because the LaborVoices system ensured employee confidentiality but enabled them to receive feedback through general company meetings, and

because the company openly encouraged employees to continue providing feedback, participation in the sys-tem increased. “We have noticed that a trust is being developed with our employees and they are more open and willing to provide feedback and suggestions for improvement.”

RSI’s example of trust-building and encouraging safety feedback can be applied to many other labor situations. The success of any safety program depends on the attitude of management, Equipment Depot’s Scaletta notes. “I believe that companies can encour-age employees to speak up about such issues through transparency and leadership from the top of the com-pany,” he says. “Once employees know the company is committed to safety and making sure all employees go home safe at the end of the day, they will speak up.”

Jennifer Storelli is associate editor for APICS magazine. She may be contacted at editorial@apics.org.

To comment on this article, send a message to feedback@apics.org.

THE SAFE ROUTE FOR TRUCKERS Because truck drivers face multiple uncontrollable hazards on the roads every day, safety must be top of mind for every fleet. “Truck drivers must drive not only for themselves, but also for others on the highway,” explains Joe L. Smith, manager of fleet safety and risk management at Kenco Management Services in Chattanooga, Tennessee. “They must be alert and anticipate erratic maneu-vers by other drivers who are talking on cell phones, texting, listening to loud music, reading while driving, talking to others in the car, and being oblivious to those driving around them—particularly large trucks.”

An accident on an interstate can cost millions of dollars in lost productivity in addition to the associated investi-gative, cleanup, insurance, legal, and reputation costs. “Even though a truck driver may not be at fault in some of the crashes that occur from other drivers’

negligence, early news reports are often incomplete, and people are quick to blame the largest vehicle involved,” Smith says.

To prevent accidents in the first place, the trucking industry uses multiple forms of safety technology. Lane-departure warning systems, collision mitigation systems, adaptive cruise control, vehicle stability systems, and rear- and side-collision warning sys-tems are commonly used to help truck drivers work safely, says Jacob Pierce, deputy executive officer of safety pro-grams for the Arlington, Virginia-based American Trucking Associations’ (ATA’s) Safety Management Council. Kenco also uses a SmartDrive camera system with outward- and inward-facing cam-eras in all on-the-road trucks to capture hazardous situations and coach drivers to correct unsafe driving behaviors.

In addition, Kenco requires all drivers to watch a JJ Keller & Associates

online, interactive training video on a monthly basis. “Providing the very best possible training for drivers and their supervisors is always the first line of safety,” Smith says. Annual recogni-tion programs, whether fleet-based or nationwide, encourage continued safe practices, he adds.

Because of its safety record, Kenco earned the 2015 ATA President’s Trophy in the Under 25 Million Miles category, as well as first place in the National Truck Safety Contest in the General Commodities/Truckload/Line-Haul up to 10 Million Miles category, the Safety Improvement Award, and the Division Improvement Award. “Kenco showed that safety and health performance is of the utmost importance,” Pierce says of Kenco’s achievements. “Their current training programs are designed to teach, motivate, and sustain safety knowledge practices amongst all of their employees.”

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