Safety Paths LLC Presentation objectives

2. Safety Paths LLCPresentation objectives • Provide an overview of the elements of a safety program • Failures of programs and some of the “whys” • Emphasize the difficulty of the task. • Raise questions as to how things have been done in the past against other ideas.

3. Navigating the Roads of Occupational Safety and Health A lesson from Alice in Wonderland • Alice in Wonderland to rabbit: “Which road should I take? • Rabbit: “ That depends on where you want to go” • Alice: “ I don’t much care.” • Rabbit: “ Then it does not matter which road you take.” Which road should we take to find parity in safety and productivity? If we have no specific goals about where we want to be in safety, as above, the road we choose will not matter.

4. Pathway to a successful Health and Safety programTwo decisions to make and finding parity in both: • 1. Any successful business journey starts with a decision for determining the destination or goal you are striving to reach. Naturally, for a safety program, that goal is always to prevent or reduce incidents of all types by controlling hazards. However, the decision should be carefully thought through since a program of controlling hazards is a commitment by all. It will take time and resources to achieve this. • 2. The second most important decision is the path you intend to take to achieve this destination. This is where that decision becomes more difficult as staffing and other variables such as time and material economics begin to come in to the picture. The path should be a complete health and safety program. • Safety thought: Setting high goals or aspirations in safety holds no guarantee unless you are committed to the goals and path you have decided upon. Without those commitments, “It won’t matter which way we go”.

5. The co$tof managing safety • There are costs for managing safety, but they are more easily measured and paid vs. the cost of injuries, fines, and low employee moral. Budgeting for safety personnel and supplies are usually exact and do not experience a lot of ups or downs. Injury cost and the administrative fees associated with accidents are not. For sure, the best way to miss budgeting plans is to have a poor safety record. • On the opposite end, more safety regulation than is required or justified will usually end up failing either financially or by other means. The regulations themselves are not the problem, it is fear behind them that can be the burden. Osha was not created to put people out of work, but to keep them working safely. Understanding this is a big step forward.

6. Which road to take to achieve safety performance? • We all wish it was an interstate highway with 70 MPH speed limits with very few, if any, stops along the way. The president creates a memo to all employees and advises everyone that we are going to eliminate accidents and we set off as fast as we can go. Should not be a problem. • On the opposite end, the path contains so many speed limits and stops along the way, it creates a burden to the management structure and economics of the business. Employee moral could also fall as the burden of producing with added regulations finds its way in to the anxiety of the work of the employee. The employee senses that the company is more concerned with regulation than producing and does not know how to manage both. Eventually, it could affect the customer base itself in lost goods or services. • The correct path is the one of a safety/productivity culture. We instill a safety culture in to the methods of producing.

7. What is involved in creating an Employee Health and Safety program? Some segments to address. • Culture in the workplace. • Elements of an EHS program • Accountability (must be in all processes) • Osha and compliance • Continuous improvement

8. Managing Safety vs. Productivity Some see safety as having to be managed separately than other performance measures such as a regulatory agency. Safety should be part of the culture of all performance metrics Safety Productivity Safety culture Productivity

9. Safety vs. Productivity Creating a culture of managing safety and productivity is not a six week boot camp. It is an ongoing task that requires daily attention. The task is ongoing and will never show up in the “task completed” column. In addition, what is already gained can be lost in a moment it seems. To be sure, no one will ever be perfect in creating that culture we strive for. But we have to work hard at trying to achieve it. Ongoing, the individual battles won in this arena will provide big dividends in the avoidance of accidents. Safety is not important if we are out of business. In addition, an unsafe business is not far from being “out of business”.

10. Culture in the work place. • First, a close definition of culture: * Shared values (what is important) and beliefs (how things work) that interact with an organization’s structures and control systems to produce behavioral norms (the way we do things) Embedded with the shared values and beliefs of a safety program are the values and beliefs of productivity and service. The continued drive to achieve both are part of the culture we want to create. We want to teach employees how to work safe and produce an end result. It should not be one or the other. As described by Jame Reason: Managing the Risk of Organizational Accidents

11. Culture: not a new term but a broader and more defined understanding. Safety culture is not a new term but one that seems to have a different meaning depending on who you discuss it with. Some leadership positions think it exist because they say it does. The employees under this style of leadership have come to know what to expect. Work safe, or else! Of course, the employee’s job is the “or else” in that meaning. In this case, it is not a culture but a mandate. For sure, the employees probably have a different definition of culture than the leadership team. True culture exist when all employees understand the importance of their contribution and expectation in the program. Management must establish the rules for sure, but all employees should be involved in the success of the program. Culture will exist when all employees understand this is “the way we do things”.

12. “The safety man” • I recently spoke with an engineer of a company that designs electrical grids worldwide. When I talked about safety, he immediately told me about their safety manager. “Man, when he pulls up in the parking lot, he has a safety vest on, puts cones around his car, and wears those glasses.” He said nothing about how he worked in cooperation with all departments for the mutual success if the company. Perhaps he just did not understand it that way. In his mind, he was just “different”. He was in fact, the safety police. Seems as if safety people are viewed differently from other employees while they are in the work place. Part of this is the nature of the job that he or she does. While it remains difficult, safety responsibilities should be seen as one of the measurements of the success of any performance metric. That is to say, we made 1000 widgets without an injury. We need to remove the police badge off the safety team without removing the knowledge base or accountability. Again, productivity and safety are areas we strive to manage together. Perhaps the “safety man” should be labeled the insurer of production, profits, and lives. Safety thought: Possibly the truth as to why he is viewed differently is the lack of culture we seek to attain. If a supervisor or employee see safety measures as different from other goals, the culture will be missing.

13. Why is safety is hard to manage? • Some arguments: • 1.Employees know that they are hired to produce something. That is why they get paid. The paycheck itself at times becomes the manager of the employee in the absence of supervision or even poor supervision. Many businesses provide numerous incentives for producing on top of regular pay. In most cases, employees know they have to work at something to get paid. So, it becomes much easier to manage the productivity or service of an employee because there is an understanding that is where their paycheck comes from. • DuPont many years ago said that a supervisor that cannot manage safety cannot manage anything else. ( I would add housekeeping to that)

14. Why is safety is hard to manage? • Safety is different. It is a method that should produce results. It is not a number. Methods can be hard to measure. A lot of gray areas and judgment calls. Some supervisors experience difficulty when having to discuss right and wrong with employees and these methods. Not as easy as “the employee failed to produce x number of widgets” discussion. Safety is more easily managed when incorporated in to the methods of how we do business- not separately.

15. Roadblocks to managing safety • For the businesses who are experiencing growth, employee turnover, seasonal issues or other strains, it can be difficult to keep a safety program thriving. Program safety requirements need to be done on a timely basis due to the hazards. Also, positive culture will not be present if employees see safety is taking a back seat to all the other concerns.

16. Roadblocks to managing safety • So, when business difficulties become pressing, management commitment can become to be measured differently. And, it is the employees doing the measuring rather than management. They can see when safety is being placed in the rear. It then becomes important that managers and supervisors find a way to continue on the safety path. That is a lot harder to do than it sounds. Easy in theory but extremely difficult in practice. As far as the importance of what we are producing for the customer, as sad as it is, most of our customers do not care about our safety record, only the delivery of the goods or services they require. We are the ones that should know that goods or services will wear down without the safety program.

17. The pathway to safety performance.The elements of a safety program.

18. Elements of a safety program. • Management leadership • Worksite analysis • Hazard prevention and control • Safety and Health training. It takes all of the elements above working in tandem to produce positive results.

19. How do the elements of a safety program work? What do each do? Why they have to “add up”. • The segments and elements of a safety program are, in effect, the hazard defenses we rely upon. They create the barriers or defenses to hazards. In a perfect world all the barriers have no holes. In the real world they all have holes. Accidents or incidents occur when a hazard falls through all of the barriers or line of defenses in the safety program.

20. What the previous slide shows is that accident prevention is best controlled by managing the barriers or defenses utilizing the elements of the safety program as our tools, Properly managed, most incidents will be avoided or “stopped” by one of the protection barriers. If thought of in this manner, how would the your company’s defenses look if visualized? As a sturdy wall or a few bricks lying around in no particular order?

21. Safety thought • In the case of this example reflecting that elements of a safety program are the line of defenses or barriers to accidents, what happens when an accident exposes a hole in barriers? Do we patch the hole or do we go back and examine the entire set of walls? In this example, perhaps we would want to perform more worksite reviews and audits. The next accident may not be related to the last one.

22. Starting with the four elements of a safety program:1. Management leadership -Effective leadership defined by the three C’s* • 1. Commitment- motivation and resources. 2. Competence- Adequate safety information systems. Information flow and acting upon it. Setting of goals. 3. Cognizance- Awareness of the hazards. Safety is like a war with no final victory. Periods of being accident free does not indicate the coming of peace in the war. Safety thought: If a central safety meeting is held, are these three c’s showing up in the leadership from top management to supervisors? Are questions being asked and leadership given? *Henry Mintzberg

23. Some truth (and humor) for management to be cognizant of hazards • It was reported that a safety visitor to an oil rig came there to congratulate employees on the safe work environment and low injury rate they had established. • One of them said “Safe? Hell, there ain’t a thing on this rig that can’t hurt you!” This “matter of fact” employee knew the difference between accident free and hazard free.

24. 1. Management leadership – some of the parts. • Written Safety policy. (Usually best if done after worksite analysis) • Commitment • Employee participation 1 • Setting objectives 2 • Management review. 1. A good indicator of culture. Employees will want to be involved. 2. There are arguments against setting a zero number of injuries as an objective or some other low number. Current thinking seems to be to set goals in the performance of the program requirements. The trap with setting low injury goals is lack of reporting by the employee or worse, the supervisor. This results in the hazard still existing instead of being addressed for the control of the hazard. For sure, if we set goals that do not include injury numbers and accidents do not go down, we are not setting clear objectives. Properly managed objectives should drive injury numbers in a positive way. It is my opinion that injury numbers be included in all goals but the accountability for employees and managers should held to the metrics of the program itself.

25. 2. Worksite analysis • Accident investigation • Self inspections or audits • Job hazard analysis • Comprehensive surveys- usually technical in nature involving safety professionals or Osha. • Risk assessments. High ranking hazards may be included in safety objectives.

26. 3. Hazard prevention and control • Hazard Controlsengineering controls, administrative controls, protective equipment. • Preventive Maintenance • Managing Change • Occupational Health medical and first aid • Emergency Planning written emergency plans • Contractor Safety • Management Review determine if changes are necessary to policies or procedures. Statistics. Trends.

27. 4. Safety and Health training • OSHA S&H Training Requirements • Training Beyond Compliance • Training MatrixGuidelines for Training Programs • Transferring Training into the Workplace • Training Records and Documentation Training is successful when there is a change in behavior.

28. Accident investigation: Back to culture • Accident investigation is one of the true test of a safety culture in two ways. 1. First, has the accident or incident been reported? If an employee is involved in an accident or incident, and no one sees or knows what happens, how confident are we that he or she will report it? Why would we not have confidence? Why would the employee not want to report it? Perhaps it is the threat of loss of safety incentives, income or rewards, peer pressure, or in some cases the job itself. For some employees, a guaranteed rebuke from the supervisor. Without the culture, these incidents go unreported. Hazards are not identified and corrective actions will not be forthcoming for protection. We are just beginning to explore in the recent years the whys and dangers of employees not reporting. In high hazard or high profile industries such as the airline industry or hospitals, reporting can even lead to criminal proceedings or loss of a business license. We can understand why reporting is a painful decision for employees. It is up to the leadership to find a way to allow the reporting along with what measures should be taken to protect the employee.

29. Accident investigation: Back to culture (cont) 2. Accident committee (Prosecutor) vs. the employee or the defendant . An accident investigative committee that is here for one reason- assess blame and institute judgment. Crush the employee. Whack the mole. Problem solved. Interesting enough, one supreme court justice once commented that a prosecutor’s job is simply to find the truth. Our accident review committee should be doing just that. If the committee is committed to finding the truth instead of trying to get a guilty plea, the truth will come out and determine the proper course of action for correction. If it is the system that is sick, fixing the employee will not solve the problem. When we truly work towards finding root causes, employees will then understand and see the commitment of the safety culture in action. 3. Follow up action. A common failure of accident reviews. Spend the time necessary to find the hazard and control it. Share and educate with the employees. Stress the fix and not the mistake made.

30. Accident investigation The big opportunity for culture reinforcement • Culture is established when employees see an earnest attempt to properly identify and remove or control a hazard after an accident investigation. Hazard control, accident information sharing with all employees, training, review of safety methods, and other systematic controls related to an accident investigation will have a positive impact on the safety program. Just to “whack the mole” does nothing to improve the process.

31. Accident investigation The big opportunity for culture reinforcement • Remember, it is easy to think culture is thriving when we find employees engaged in the activities of audits, surveys, and meetings. Serving on an accident review board is more difficult as the members of the board can become the prosecutors of fellow employees. Establishing culture in this area requires training of all review board members and living by the rules we establish for conducting these reviews.

32. Building a decision tree for culpability in accidentsIndividual vs. system accidents(creating culture) • An simple example: Was the accident intentional? No Were Safety Rules violated? No Are all methods training complete for employee? Yes • Yes Were deviances found in training program? • Yes No Yes Is there evidence of training and understanding of rules? Yes No Employee culpable Disciplinary action Organizational incident It is difficult to look at this without thinking there is room for all employees to blame it on the system. However, we cannot exclude the fact that our training systems do in fact fail us at times. The secret to this example is to always be looking at our training methods and hazard controls and update them. If supervisors know the documentation of training will be scrutinized at accident reviews, they will become better on the front end of the curve of training of their employees. In addition, auditing becomes a successful tool in updating the training tools as hazards and deficiencies could be caught ahead of time. While 97% of all accidents are considered due to unsafe acts or conditions, 90% are usually blameless or considered a mistake or system failure. Is there an argument in this?

33. Self inspections and audits “The invisible hazard” “Auditing using our imagination” • Invisible hazards- an example. Hazards that cannot be seen such as defective relief valves, internal piping corrosion, fire system failures, failing electrical wiring, equipment operators that may not be properly trained, a truck driver whose skill sets are hard to measure. If you think about it, the most costly accidents out there usually caused by the human element of hazards control. How will people react in stressful situations? These are hazards that do not show up in audits. These failures in the audit system require additional tools to find these hazards. Work on finding ways to make the hazards visible. • Using imagination Many safety professionals and supervisors use a checklist when auditing. There is even software you can upload in tablets for this purpose. While it can be an effective tool, it can in some cases take the “eyes” of the auditor away from potential hazards. They become used to the check off system and the areas on the check list only. Imagination of potential hazards is key to auditing. It is important to keep our minds fresh while performing these audits. The auditor should prepare his or her mind for an audit so that imagination can flow.

34. Are safety managers and programs easy to do business with? “ETDB” • A few years ago, there was a book that discussed how customers measured companies on how easy it was to do business with them. How well did the company respond to the needs or wants of the customer? Was the company representatives easily available and ready to help or was there a mountain of bureaucracy to weave through. Was the company willing to go the extra mile? If I needed something, would I end up spending an afternoon of voice mails before I got a phone call? • Is our safety department easy to do business with? Will they work with other departments in a productive way? Is there such a bureaucracy that it is hard to get things done timely? If I find a puddle of water on the floor and clean it up, it will cost me my whole day because of the mammoth list of related task of reporting and investigating? How can we get it all done and make our safty department “Easy To Do Business With”? • Safety thought: If the safety process is so time consuming that even small events are likely to cause supervisors or employees considerable time away from productive tasks, the chances are they will simply not report them out of frustration.

35. Osha: Fear management or a toolset? • The mention of Osha makes no one smile. We worry that Osha is here only to fine us. (Although there supposedly must be something wrong for Osha to do this) Think of this for a moment. We are upset when we receive a speeding ticket (Even though we were speeding). Just the sight of police and state troupers on the highway cause us to slow down or think of might be wrong with how we are driving. Is this because we know we all make mistakes and sometimes intentionally stretch the rules on the highway? Consider this. What would happen to public highway safety records if there were no enforcement on the roads? Our sense of personal freedom proves we will all make bad choices at times. This in itself is a danger of living in a society of one that boast of personal freedom. This freedom can be and has been proven to be dangerous.

36. Osha: Fear management or a toolset? (cont) • Osha is no different than any other regulatory agency. There must be enforcement and education of the regulations and management of the hazards to be successful in the workplace. Yes, we fear Osha and that is a good thing for everyone. It is only when we totally disregard the regulations that anxiety adds to this fear. • The fear of OSHA somewhat goes away when we capture OSHA’s goals ourselves. Simply put, it is to provide employees a place of employment free from recognized hazards that that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to the employees. • It took me years to find out ( and I am probably like most others) that Osha is also here to help and can provide numerous tools to assist in our safety programs. Hard to imagine but we have other regulatory agencies in our companies. Productivity, customer service levels , diversity, product integrity, and accountability are just a few of the “freedoms” we have to manage. What would happen when these “agencies” ceased to exist? The mistake is made here that we go out of business when these are not managed and safety is not as critical to keeping our doors open for business.

37. Osha Perhaps you think as I do that the real fear we have of Osha is not of Osha but of disclosure to the public. Our society (and their attorneys) and the media has determined that someone must be blamed for an incident or wrongdoing. To them, satisfaction comes when there is a name attached and justice is served. Attorneys who bring legal actions upon large companies or doctors make a good living on this. Seems news concerning possible fixes and positive outcomes are not what they are interested in. As we know, this attitude is not going away. We must be on the front line of proving we are interested in safety in the workplace. Our goal would be that if we were providing news to the public, it would be positive and boring to hear. Unfortunately, to most, the kind no one seems to be interested in hearing. To be sure, to stay out of the news is not the reason we should struggle so hard with a safety program. However, since the effect of news and disclosure can and will affect our business, it should always be talked about and in front of us. Another safety thought: Since we are all part of the same society, is this the reason we want to come down so hard on an employee who made a mistake and caused an accident? Is this the reason we would rather whack the mole and get justice (in our minds) served than find true solutions in our safety program?

38. Osha Education of the regulations • In times past, the supervisor or those higher, were the information holders. Some supervisors did not share information because they believe it was job security. (You cannot fire me cause I am the only one that knows the system.) In reality, this is dangerous for obvious reasons. We have to train our employees not only for them to work safely but because this insures there are more eyes looking for hazards. If a supervisor has 10 employees under him, and he is the only one skilled to look for hazards, only 1/10th of the workforce is watching for hazards. If all are reasonably trained, we get up to the possibility of 100%. • Safety thought: Homeland Security has thousands of employees. Yet, the Christmas bomber and the Times Square bomber were discovered by the general public, not Homeland Security. That is because the general public had been educated by the media. If they had not had exposure or any education of this nature, no one would have reported or acted upon it. If our employees are trained and educated, they will use it in a beneficial way.

39. Some ending thoughts • To be sure, this slide presentation only introduced the elements of the safety program and did not dive in to the details of them. The method here is to show how failures in the human form can cause failures of a proven system. Most of the problems associated with a operating an efficient safety program will not be found in the elements themselves but the application of them from the leadership team and the employees. We can be successful using the tools of the safety program if and only if we can manage the human issue. That is the hard part. Remember: Safety is a war with no final victory. A period of being accident free does not indicate the coming of peace.