Strategies for
injury prevention in an aging workforce
How to Integrate Fitness and Supervisor Leadership into Your Safety Program
By Fred Drennan, and Dr. David Richey
With Baby Boomers
entering their fifties, employers are feeling the impact of an aging workforce.
According to the Surgeon General, sixty percent of adults are overweight and
out of shape. This is a major cause of concern not only for general health and
health care costs, but for cumulative trauma disorders to backs, knees, shoulders,
and necks. These injuries make up half of all workers comp costs. Yet general fitness—the ability to perform
everyday tasks without excess fatigue or injury—is rarely a part of an injury
prevention program.
Never has their been a greater need to help workers improve their
fitness and adopt healthier lifestyles. If you’ve ever tried to maintain a
fitness routine or stick to a diet, you know that need does not necessarily
translate to accomplishment. This
article clarifies the need to integrate personal fitness into worksite safety
leadership programs; defines the key features and strategies of effective
integrated programs; and presents case studies where integrated fitness and
safety leadership have reduced musculoskeletal injuries, reduced workers comp
costs, and created a culture supportive of world class safety systems.
What is the Impact of the Aging Workforce?
In
In 2001, “preventable” workers
comp and health care costs exceeded six times the profit of our top ten
corporations. Diseases controllable by lifestyle cost the
Never has the need been greater for organizations to help employees
improve personal fitness. Never has the case been more justified to integrate
fitness into the daily worksite safety culture.
Making the Safety/Fitness Connection
Lack of flexibility and strength is a primary risk factor for low back and other soft tissue injuries[ii]. These injuries account for half of all workers comp costs. In this environment, an effective safety program is not complete unless it addresses flexibility and strength as prevention for musculoskeletal injuries (MSDs). Basic flexibility, strength, and knowledge about fitness and health are an individual’s most important safety asset. Management must educate employees about the importance of flexibility and strength in preserving their fitness and include daily stretching as part of their safety routine. And if they really want to see the injury rates and incidents go down, they must create the mandate for participation.
Consider the following examples:
Poor hamstring flexibility. Traditional back safety training theory says that we should “lift with our legs.” Employers sign their workers up for annual back safety training, yet back injuries continue to be the second leading cause of workplace absenteeism. Why? When theory translates to practice, proper lifting prevents injury. However, if you observe a group of employees as they perform their daily tasks, and you will see that too many fall short of the proper lifting model. They lack hamstring flexibility and strength in the quadriceps to get into the proper lifting position! (Exhibit 1)
Muscle Imbalance. Working in the same position, or doing the same thing over and over, will eventually cause the body to develop muscle imbalances that result in chronic poor posture. Even when workstations are designed to ergonomic standards, employees suffer pain and discomfort from chronic poor posture due to muscle imbalance. A well designed flexibility and strength program can improve damaging postures, relieve chronic pain, and often can reverse injury or prevent costly surgery for CTDs.
Flexibility and strength training
To get maximum participation in a fitness initiative, organizations must adopt a program that the majority of employees can perform without strain or pain and integrate it into the daily safety routine. Most individuals will tolerate a gradual introduction to stretching and strengthening moves. These moves can usually be performed in regular clothes without getting on the floor. Because stretching feels so good, employees feel the benefits almost immediately.
Maximizing return on investment through Integrated Safety, Fitness, and Leadership
To survive in today’s economy, organizations cut costs wherever they can. Department heads must justify their budgets, including the safety department. Senior management asks for return on investment (ROI) for any costs above normal operating expenses. Integrating safety, fitness, and leadership can broaden the impact of your safety investment beyond just the reduction of workers compensation cost.
Linking Safety and Health – New Opportunities for ROI
When you look at workers compensation and health care costs, they are two sides of the same coin. Half of all workers comp costs originate from cumulative trauma disorders (back injuries, carpal tunnel, chronic pain, and other musculoskeletal injuries.). Half of all health care costs are the result of unhealthy lifestyles. Health care costs average about three times the cost of workers comp. Taken together, these facts make it clear that improving the fitness level of the workforce by helping them adopt healthier lifestyles has a huge potential for cost savings—not only in workers comp and health care, but also in having a more fit, productive workforce.
Linking safety to productivity – Safety Leadership Skills
In today’s global marketplace competitive, profitable organizations build highly committed, highly effective workforces to stay in the game. They focus their efforts on the natural work unit and the immediate supervisor to achieve world class results. World-class management organizations have transitioned from the traditional “command and control” style to self-managed work teams with a skilled supervisor as coach. Because safety professionals have traditionally focused on compliance, their activities are often considered a legal necessity rather than a profit center. Few organizations have adopted the team approach to injury prevention, which truly has the potential to contribute to the organization’s profitability.
Integrating fitness, leadership, and safety develops skills and creates systems that translate across all areas of an organization. For example, the skills a supervisor uses to achieve record-breaking safety performance are the same skills required for improved productivity, improved quality, and waste reduction. Training safety leadership skills at the supervisor level and tracking the improved performance will increase your value as a member of the management team. It will not only makes your job easier, but gives you the measurable results you need to get serious support from upper management.
Integrated fitness, safety, and
supervisor leadership extend safety ROI in many measurable areas:
n Reduce incidence and severity of cumulative trauma disorders
n 90% or greater participation rate in daily safety activities
n More skillful supervisor leadership for safety, health and productivity
n Improved flexibility and strength for greater overall fitness and health
n Daily safety training for true culture/behavior change
n 30 to 80% of participants adopt healthier lifestyles
n Improved morale and sense that the organization cares
n Increased focus on team-driven safety and health objectives
n Increased productivity through healthier employees
n Reduced health care costs.
Is the employer responsible for an individual worker’s fitness and health?
If every individual took responsibility for their own fitness and maintained themselves at peak performance level throughout their adult life, employers would have nothing to worry about. Injury rates would be cut dramatically, absenteeism would drop, and our health care system would not be upside down. But the majority of people do not do what they should to take care of themselves. These people populate your offices, work on your shop floors, drive your vehicles, and operate your equipment. Many of them, loyal employees, work in pain on a daily basis and don’t report it. However loyal they are, productivity suffers.
In 2001, the Surgeon General reported that 60% of adults don’t exercise enough to maintain basic health; one in four adults are totally sedentary[iii]. Heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, and stoke are all highly preventable by proper diet and exercise. You can’t watch TV, read a magazine or newspaper, listen to the radio or “surf the net” without being exposed to something about our overall lack of fitness. Bombarded with this information, you’d think we’d all be at the gym, slimming down and exercising every day, but most of us aren’t. Half of those who start exercise programs with good intentions end up quitting within six months, and 90% quit within one year[iv].
Employers must share the responsibility
Americans lead the world in hours worked. We commute long distances. Along the way, we stop off at fast food restaurants for an unhealthy meal. When we get home we flop on the couch, exhausted. Family members who may try to improve their lifestyle are often defeated by lack of support from others.
Nowhere is the impact of the general lack of personal fitness felt greater than in the workplace. Employees continue to suffer soft tissue injuries, despite an organization’s efforts to provide ergonomically correct workstations and engineering improvements. Excessive weight and lack of flexibility and strength in the general worker population takes its toll on employees and employers continue to suffer the losses, either in workers comp or health care. So while the individual must ultimately be responsible for his or her own physical condition, employers must “step up to the plate” if they are to remain competitive in today’s global environment. They must provide every opportunity to promote employee fitness or suffer financial consequences.
Misplaced Focus – A passive approach
Most workplace efforts toward helping employees improve their health originate in the Human Resource department. It usually takes the form of passive information such as brochures distributed by health care insurance providers, or an annual health fair where employees can get their cholesterol levels or blood pressure taken for free. While this certainly has value, we have only to review the statistics to see that this approach has had little effect on improving worker fitness. The reality is, most people wait until that first heart attack or stroke before they take action to improve their health.
It takes more than pamphlets and health fairs to motivate the general workforce toward fitness and lasting lifestyle change:
n Employers must build in time for daily fitness if they want to keep workers of all ages healthy and productive.
n Employers must educate their workforce about the risks to themselves and to the organization’s survival.
n Employers must abandon the passive approach and integrate health and fitness into daily operations.
A Team Approach
Self-directed work groups (teams) always out-perform traditional command management systems. The nationally-coveted Malcom Baldridge Quality Award criteria includes team development as a core requirement. As with the quality movement, the success of any integrated fitness and safety initiative will depend on the top-down support of a team-based approach.
The level of team deployment varies from organization to organization and even within departments in an organization. In some cases, work groups exist, but don’t know they are on a team! When supervisors view their natural work group as a team and management recognizes and rewards at the supervisor and team level, team members work together for the success of their team.
Integrated fitness, safety and leadership creates dynamic, high performance teams from your natural work groups.
Natural work groups make the best teams
Teams formed from natural work groups generate “Team Power” for world-class safety performance.
n Team members develop common goals
n Team members face common hazards, risks, and challenges
n Teams require 100% participation
n Natural work groups already have team leaders (supervisor)
n Teams help individuals to achieve more
n Progress can be measured and tracked at the team level
n Provides a forum for daily safety activities
n Provides daily forum for positive recognition.
Accountability - Inspect what you expect
World class safety performance requires accountability. Teams and supervisors must be trained in the systems you install and the key measures that support it, then audited for performance based on those measures. Key measures for supervisor safety leadership include seven basic leadership skills, also applicable to other supervisor functions:
n Giving positive recognition
n Giving constructive feedback
n Setting tolerance levels
n Team building
n Soliciting safety suggestions for continuous improvement
n Goal setting
n Scorekeeping for safety systems
n Supervisor as trainer.
There’s no value in training unless it is applied on the job. To successfully integrate leadership and safety, supervisors must be audited to ensure they apply what they’ve learned. You as the safety professional have a responsibility to ensure that the training you conduct is audited regularly to ensure the methods are not only being used, but are effectively achieving safety goals. At a minimum, supervisors should be audited monthly during the first year of safety leadership training. A management-supported recognition plan should be in place at program startup so that supervisors know in advance what is expected and what’s in it for them. Rewards and recognition must be fairly awarded to supervisors who demonstrate mastery of the leadership skills. Ignoring low performance will have a negative impact on your entire effort. Supervisors who fail to meet at least the minimum requirements must hear from management about their failure to comply with the safety requirements. Depending on the organization, this may vary from receiving a “fatherly talk” or a written notice.
Ultimate accountability for safety performance should extend to the supervisors annual review. The team approach gives a supervisor more control over his work group’s performance and auditable systems provide data to support accountability.
What to audit
To achieve consistent, record-breaking safety performance, you must have an auditing system. In an integrated program, auditing focuses at the supervisor and team level. Using a behavior-based scoring system, we measure the supervisor use of safety leadership skills and the on-the-job application of the seven safety systems by his team. For example, one of the leadership skills is “supervisor as trainer.” Supervisors are trained in how to deliver daily safety training using a large-format FlipBook. It contains a mini safety meeting for every working day of the year. A day’s one-minute topic might be: Tight hamstrings can cause low back pain. Participants learn what stretches can immediately relieve low back pain and how increased hamstrings flexibility assists people to use proper lifting postures.
The leader guide prompts supervisors to apply leadership skills on-the-job and engage team members in daily safety activity. Each day the supervisor leads the stretch routine and during the routine, the FlipBook prompt might be: Ask: “Has anyone had witnessed a near miss?” The team begins a discussion as the stretch routine progresses. If a near miss is reported, the team may decide to log it and set up an action plan to do a root cause analysis (RCA). When they complete the RCA, they log it in their team notebook or software program.
On a monthly basis, supervisors are audited while using the system. The audit is performed during the stretch routine using an audit sheet that coincides with the FlipBook material. The auditor observes actual supervisor and team performance and reviews the teams log. A typical audit is based on the following elements:
n Team participation in the daily flexibility and strength program
n Using the FlipBook and completing the safety quizzes provided with the system
n Team building activity
n Goal Setting activity
n Near miss reporting
n Reporting unsafe acts
n Reporting unsafe conditions
n Making safety suggestions for continuous improvement
n Developing or reviewing Job Safety Analysis (JSA)
n Conducting root cause analyses (RCA)
n Number of safety improvements completed.
This level of auditing provides many opportunities for safety performance measurement. At the end of the first year, supervisors should have accrued enough audit points for applying their leadership skills on the job to achieve supervisor safety leadership certification.
We developed a SuperScorecard and software program to track this data (Exhibit 2). How senior management uses it varies from organization to organization. Highly effective organizations present SuperScorecard and team performance data at senior staff meetings and provide recognition and reward at the supervisor, team, and individual level. At a minimum, safety performance, based on auditable, objective data, should be part of the supervisor’s annual performance review.
Six Years of Development—Lessons Learned
The integrated fitness, safety, and leadership approach was developed specifically to address the incidence and severity of musculoskeletal injuries related to cumulative trauma disorders in the workplace. Stretching at work isn’t a new idea; however, it has often been perceived as a simple warm up prior to exercise or strenuous work. But when you consider that lack of flexibility and strength—both improved by daily stretching—are major risk factors in the development of MSDs, stretching not only has a place in today’s safety systems, it is necessary to prevent MSDs.
When you experience the results of a properly implemented program—reduced risk factors for CTDs, reduced injury and pain, fewer workers comp and health care claims, improved morale and productivity—you can’t deny the value.
As safety professionals, we are bound to seek out the root causes of injury. Daily flexibility and strength training goes directly to the root cause of most MSDs. In 1992, we assembled a team of experts to develop a program that would appeal to everyone, get maximum participation, and provide continuous improvement in personal fitness. Our fitness professionals had masters level degrees in biomechanics and kinesiology. Our leadership team was led by an experienced industrial psychologist. We worked with management teams in a variety of environments to assemble a series of stretches that focused on the areas most commonly at risk for CTDs. These included necks, shoulders, wrists, knees, hamstrings, low back, and mid body areas. In other words, balanced flexibility and strength. Our goal was to create a 10 to 12 minute, measurable effort to improve basic flexibility, range of motion, and strength.
The core processes were developed over six years; some by design, some by trial and error, and some through pure serendipity. The result was a viable program that is in operation at oil platforms, public agencies, and manufacturing plants across the country.
The following case studies describe the journey.
Offshore Oil Platforms - California
Oil industry workers on platforms off the coast of
We implemented a voluntary worksite stretching program, beginning with an all-ands orientation that included information about the importance of stretching in the prevention of CTDs. The platform operator designated space and furnished an exercise facility. We developed a simple diet booklet that outlined basics of healthy eating, and worked with the catering staff to make lower calorie, healthier meals available to the platform workers. Where the workers participated, employees began to experience the benefits, and some employees made significant lifestyle changes to improve their health at work and at home.
To align the stretching program with the platform operator’s total quality management efforts (TQM), we included baseline flexibility measurements to track flexibility improvements. We measured progress at frequent intervals and provided the feedback to participants and management.
After three months of
stretching, the platform superintendent asked for a different routine. We developed a Phase II routine that
increased the challenge by adding controlled movement, similar to Tai Chi.
Measurement continued and participants improved. The program continues
today. All meetings start with a stretch routine, which has become a core
process at all of their
Lesson Learned: A stretching routine should be changed about every three months. The stretch routines should start out easy and then gradually increase intensity. As participant flexibility increases, you can increase the challenge and add more elements. The multi-phase stretch routine became a core process of the fitness program.
The TQM process requires various measurement systems. This provides objective feedback and recognition for employee performance. The measurement system developed for the stretch routine included three flexibility tests: (1) hamstring flexibility, which is essential for proper lifting, (2) mid body rotation, important for range of motion in the low back, and (3) Shoulder Rotation, measuring range of motion in the shoulder girdle (Exhibit 3).
Participants liked having their flexibility measured and looked forward to receiving the results. The three flexibility tests became a core process of the fitness program.
Large County Agency
–
We implemented a similar program at a large county public works operation to help control the incidence and severity of MSDs among their flood control workers and road crews. Using the proven processes implemented at offshore oil platforms, we conducted employee orientations, baseline measurements, and quarterly flexibility tests for individuals and teams. This provided progressive feedback and motivation to improve. Stretches were implemented in four phases, each building in a little more challenge and variety, including balance, strength, and coordination moves. To fight boredom, we added fitness sticks for interest and increased challenge, and resistance cords to promote balanced strength (Exhibits 4 and 5). Highly qualified fitness professionals monitored the process and coached individuals and teams to higher performance.
After a year, performance data showed that the number of employees at high risk for CTDs was reduced from 92 to 40 percent (Exhibit 6.) While flexibility training was successful in many locations, not all locations stayed with the program. For example, participation and risk factor reductions were greater where supervisors actively participated and encouraged team performance. One supervisor took his team from 90% at high risk (very low flexibility measures) to everyone in the low risk categories (everyone achieved good to excellent flexibility status). This team logged 100% participation throughout the year. The supervisor with the lowest participation rate posted the lowest risk flexibility scores, the highest risk factors, and the team gradually stopped participating.
Lesson Learned: Employees tend to adopt the supervisor’s attitude about safety and health[v]. If a supervisor is enthusiastic and supports a daily stretching program, the employees embrace it. If the supervisor is disinterested, the program falls to the wayside. It became clear that supervisory involvement was a key element in success or failure of the program. To get 100% participation, we had to answer the question: “How do we guarantee supervisor involvement”?
Borrowing from TQM and behavioral principles, we developed a supervisor safety leadership program. Four supervisor safety leadership workshops, one for each quarter to coincide with the phased flexibility and strength program, presented seven safety leadership skills. The FlipBook became the delivery system to help supervisors apply the leadership skills on the job. Combined with daily safety messages and prompts for participation from the team, the 10-minute stretching session became the forum for the supervisor to deliver safety training on a daily basis. Along with periodic quizzes on the material presented, the daily training sessions now met most requirements of safety training compliance, which was an added benefit to the overall safety program. The leadership workshops and FlipBook Training System became core processes of the integrated fitness/safety program.
City Agency – Tree
Trimming Department
In a city parks and recreation department, the workers responsible to maintain city trees and park lands had the majority of the injuries. With many lost time injuries, co-workers were forced to take up the slack and poor morale affected production. The average age of the worker was 45. Their jobs required heavy manual lifting and the use of power equipment that demanded significant physical effort. We implemented a daily flexibility and strength program using all our core processes, plus the Safety Leadership training. Employees began to feel better right away, and by the end of the year, their injury rates and lost time incidents had improved dramatically (Exhibit 7).
During site visits, however, we found that supervisors were not using the FlipBook Training System. They enjoyed doing the flexibility and strength program, and were definitely getting the benefits of stretching, but they were not engaging in the leadership skills application or conducting daily safety training during the flexibility routine.
The city lacked systems to hold supervisors accountable for safety performance, and there was no two-way communication between supervisors and upper management regarding their safety performance. It became clear that an auditing system had to be developed to measure supervisor engagement in the leadership systems.
Lessons Learned: In many work environments, supervisors will do only those things for which they are held accountable. We commonly see accountability in production or sales, but seldom in safety. Without an audit system in place, it is nearly impossible to hold the supervisor accountable for safety performance. We developed an audit system using behavior-based scorekeeping. Observers scored supervisors as they led the stretching and used the training system. They were awarded points according to their application of the skills: (0) no attempt, (1) attempted, (2) skilled, and (3) master. All data collected from the supervisor and team performance audits were summarized on a SuperScorecard. The SuperScorecard provided a basis for performance measurement that could easily be reviewed at senior management staff meetings as a quick look at the supervisor’s participation in safety training and injury prevention. The auditing and the Super Scorecard became a core process of the integrated fitness/safety/leadership program.
Multinational
Manufacturer –
At one facility, an organization’s worker injury rate
placed them at 4th from the bottom in safety performance out of
their 40 manufacturing plants in the
In December 2002, the safety staff conducted meetings with all employees to discuss their willingness to adopt a daily stretching routine that incorporated safety training and leadership skills. Eighty-five percent of the employees voted yes! Those who voted “no” were primarily concerned about a mandatory program for physical activity and lobbied hard to influence others not to participate. However, in January 2003, the management and safety staff, assisted by a team of experts trained in the integrated fitness/safety teams approach, implemented the program.
All the core processes were used to roll out the program. We performed baseline flexibility measurements. Twenty-eight teams were formed of the natural work groups; and the 28 team leaders (including senior managers, supervisors, and lead persons) were trained in the leadership skills for the first phase of the program. During focus group meetings, team leaders expressed fears about employee participation. Strategies were discussed to help them focus on the positive aspects of the program and management agreed to give them full support. At program kickoff, 70 percent of the employees volunteered to be tested for baseline flexibility, received their personal and team scores, and learned the Phase I stretching routine Exhibit 8). Those who opted out of the stretch routine were required to attend the daily safety training conducted during the stretch routine, and take quizzes based on the material presented. The program proceeded according to plan, employees began stretching every day, and worked through their daily FlipBook safety training system.
By the end of the first two weeks, the teams had begun to work their “magic.” More and more employees agreed to be tested and participate. Since then, the teams have adopted their own team names and have fun in various ways during the stretch routine. Using the daily safety/stretch routine as a forum, teams were asked to report and evaluate near misses, unsafe conditions, unsafe acts, and make suggestions for safety improvement. The participation rates, number of safety reports and percent of reports “resolved” were tracked so that management could quickly see how each team was doing.
The physical benefits began immediately. Employee testimonies report immediate reductions or elimination in tingling and numbing of fingers, low back pain, nighttime finger numbness and leg pain. They shared their routines with family members and report using stretch techniques at home as well as at work.
“Abstainers” visibly protested, but the teams pressed on. No musculoskeletal injuries occurred during the first quarter of 2003.
Lessons Learned: During the initial roll out, a small group of union members became very adamant that they were not required to participate in the stretching program. We were concerned about the impact this situation would have on overall participation, especially in view of the earlier failure of the behavior-based effort. Management and labor finally agreed that stretching would be voluntary; but all employees must attend the stretching routine because safety training was conducted during that time.
In discussions with management and hourly employees, we learned that there existed a strong riff among the employee population. The majority were dissatisfied with the tactics used by the union members to stop the effective implementation of the new safety program. Union pressure was great. The startup numbers verify this: only 75 percent of the entire workforce is currently engaged in the new safety systems. To achieve world class safety performance and have a shot at “Best in Class” among their 40 U.S facilities, they must have at least 90 percent or more engagement in the safety systems.
The employees who actively participate in the integrated fitness, safety, and leadership program will continue to improve their knowledge, flexibility, and strength and will realize the benefits of improved overall fitness. The integrated fitness, safety, and leadership approach has created a major culture change among the majority of their workforce and this will continue to have an impact on their injury rate, their morale, and their overall safety performance. However, this organization will have to address the negative influences of a core group of union employees if they are to achieve “Best-in-Class.” This status cannot be achieved when 25 percent of the workforce is actively sabotaging efforts through intimidation, false rumors, and peer pressure. It is our opinion that participation in proven safety initiatives and compliance are not optional.Lack of compliance, on any level, should generate disciplinary action.
Results of Integrated Fitness, Safety, and Leadership
Heavy Manufacturing Plant
At a forklift manufacturing company, workers were exposed to heavy lifting, prolonged standing, working with arms overhead, bending and twisting, and constant forceful gripping. The average age of the workforce was 47. Ergonomic improvements had been installed including monorails for moving heavy parts; however, back injuries continued as a major source of injury and were taking a high toll on profits. A mandatory stretching and strength program was implemented using multi-phased, progressively challenging routines throughout the year. Participants stretched every day and were tested each quarter for flexibility.
Results: Injuries were reduced by about 80 percent and this organization has not had a lost time back injury in two years. Employees report fewer aches and pains and productivity has increased by as much as 20 percent.
University campus
Food, residential, and
facilities maintenance workers at a university complex had workers comp claims
of over a million dollars. Employees were subject to long periods of standing,
stooping, bending, light and heavy lifting.
The majority of the injuries were MSDs. A comprehensive flexibility and
strength program was implemented and continued for one year.
Results: The
organization reduced its workers comp costs by 75% after one year in the
program. (Exhibit 9)
Summary
The
We’ve focused our efforts at individuals to adopt healthier lifestyles, and we’ve totally failed. Society’s pressure is too great. Long commutes, long work hours, constant availability of fast foods, single parents trying to make ends meet, living alone, and lack of social support all contribute poor eating and exercise habits.
The worksite is a perfect place to acquire positive lifestyle change given the right environment. We spend half our waking lives at there. For many people, the workplace is the most relevant community in which they participate.
Worksite fitness, leadership training, and safety training aren’t new concepts. But integrating fitness and leadership into the daily safety program will transform these programs into a dynamic new system to prevent illness and injuries before they happen. And health care costs—three times the cost of workers comp—can be just as preventable as injury with improved overall fitness. By linking fitness to the safety program, the safety professional can exponentially increase his value to the organization and to the community at large.
We must do a better job of training for safety leadership. We must set up systems to clearly define what we want our supervisors to do. And, we must do a better job of setting up accountability systems for measuring safety performance.
As safety professionals, we have a
moral obligation to protect our employees, not just earn our living at their
expense. We must rediscover our passion for what we do and strive to develop
safety programs that capture the hearts and minds of the employees. When you
integrate fitness into your daily safety routine and establish systems to get
100 percent participation and keep it going, you capture employee hearts and
minds on a personal level. They not only
become more active in safety initiatives, but also begin truly caring about one
another’s personal health and well being.
Teams gather a few minutes every
day to work on the safety of their members. This is a profound culture
change. The safety/company culture now supports all employees, and we
can finally say, “we are our brothers keepers”.
Key Elements of Successful
Fitness/Safety/Leadership Integration
n Senior Management Must Initiate the Culture
Change
n To achieve culture change, senior management must manage the processes.
n Supervisor Safety Leadership Training
n To lead their teams, supervisors must learn the leadership skills and apply them on the job. (Positive recognition, constructive feedback, setting tolerance levels, team building, goal setting, scorekeeping for safety systems, and supervisor as trainer.)
n Team-based
Systems
n Team-based management out-performs “command” management style.
n Natural work groups make the best teams
n Daily flexibility and strength training
n Fit workers are more productive and less prone to injury
n Flexibility is a first step everyone can take to improve fitness
n Install Measurement Systems
n What gets measured gets done!
n Integrate safety training during the fitness routine
n The fitness routine is a part of the safety meeting and therefore mandatory.
n Install Audit systems
n To assess supervisor and team performance, frequent auditing is required.
n Accountability at Supervisor and Team Level
n Recognize and reward high performance at the supervisor, team, and individual level.
n Provide consequences for low performance.
n Senior managers must regularly review SuperScorecards at staff meetings.
For more information about Team Safety’s integrated safety and fitness programs, visit their web site at www.teamsafetyinc.com.