Proforma Safety Blog

Safety Observations from the Front Line

Posted by proforma on June 4, 2009  |  No Comments

Safety Moments asked Proforma Safety Paramedic/HSSE Advisor Chris Hosid for his thoughts on what makes for a safe workplace, based on his years of experience. Chris spent 26 years as a firefighter pramedic and has been teaching paramedics and EMT’s for 12 years. He also spent six years on the helicopter at Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler Texas.

In your experience, what’s the differentiating factor in whether a job gets done safely, or not?
When an employee takes ownership of the safety of the entire project and participates in that process from a “what if” perspective, things improve greatly. If employees feel that they can make a difference, they will, and the battle is won.

What have you observed to be a major contributor to accidents on the job?
When workers feel as though safety is someone else’s responsibility; then they are part of the problem and not the solution. Safety on the job is a mindset. Rules and regulations are not what makes a safety program successful, although they do set the standard for what constitutes safe job performance.

What do you think of behavior-based safety training?
Behavioral-based safety is a tool used to spot or highlight certain traits that must be addressed. This process must be a two-way street. It should not be used to blame or tag anyone.

Management is accountable for safety. The employee must feel free to discuss issues at the management level, or have trusted representation to facilitate those discussions.

If the employees feel that they do not have a voice, it’s “game over.” Threats and pointing fingers only leave people bitter and reluctant to be a part of the solution.

How do you train workers to do their job safely? What do you think of the effectiveness of OSHA 10 hr or 30 hr courses?
Safety is a continuous process. No one knows it all. Classroom training is a start to a process that builds one’s “real world” experiences. The OSHA 10- and 30-hour programs are just a foundation on which to build. They are informative and give the basics of safety.

It’s the on the job experience – and working within a safety culture — that builds one’s understanding of what it is to perform every job with safety as top priority.

How can management help in this learning process?
Managers who also serve as mentors with a strong and knowledgeable safety stance are key to bridging classroom and on-the-job tasks.

Leadership that supports, exhibits and enforces good sound safety practices in its own organization and its subcontractors will ensure the effectiveness of the safety culture at its worksites.

How can an organization eliminate risk?
Engineer the hazard out of the job is the best way to address risk. This is a management action that often is put into motion based on input from the employees.

Recognizing the hazard and communicating the findings should be a fluid process. If there’s lack of information or understanding, or even resistance in the organization to mitigating the identified hazard, the system is broken. And broken systems get people hurt.

What are the challenges you face every day to keep the client’s workplace safe?
I can say from experience that safety is a dynamic process. No two jobs are the same.

Our biggest day-to-day challenge is keeping people motivated to do their job in the safest manner possible. It’s getting them to think about what they are about to do — before they do it — and to consider just how they could get hurt from doing it that way.

Unfortunately most people believe that their safety is someone else’s responsibility, not theirs. That accidents and injuries happen to others and not to them. Changing this way of thinking is the biggest challenge for every HSE Advisor, Site Safety Representative, Safety Manager and HSE Director in the world.

Another challenge is to help people stay focused. Everyone has personal issues and an abundance of things on their minds. It is only human to think of home while at work. This is and of itself will allow even the best employee to lose focus. Onsite HSE personnel can truly make the difference when this common issue arises.

If everyone would just do a “What If The Job” before they make a move, injuries and accidents could be drastically reduced, both on the and off the job. This is nothing more than a simple ‘AUDIT,’ where a person stops, thanks about the job they are about to do, picks out the hazards or areas where they may get hurt, then mediate those hazards with PPE, barriers, guards or other devices that would prevent injury, accidents, damage or loss time.

What do we mean by an AUDIT? To us at Proforma Safety, it means “All U Do Is Think.” Getting people to just think SAFETY is our biggest challenge.