CLIENT SUCCESS

Jack Butler, Human Resources Director:

Quebecor World is the largest commercial print media company in the world with 43 thousand employees in 160 plants in 16 countries. At the Hazleton, Pennsylvania plant, built in 1987, approximately 300 employees work in a continuous operation to print and bind telephone directories. In a normal year, they produce over 300 different titles, which is almost 40 million individual books and 128 million pounds of paper.

When the plant first opened, we had little in the way of formal safety programming, for example, no published safety guidelines and no case management for injured associates. Being a craft that is centuries old, sometimes it seems that safety attitudes are equally old. “Printing is a dangerous business.” “There's nothing you can do – accidents will happen.” “After all, they are accidents – people aren't trying to get hurt.” However, in the early 1900's, we did implement safety policies and procedures, began case management, and instituted alternate-duty work for those with physical restrictions. We tried to raise awareness with safety posters, safety videos, monthly safety meetings, safety games, and Safety Week festivities. We formed a Safety Committee of managers, supervisors, and associates. Division Human Resources Director, Jay Phillips, trained managers, supervisors, and Safety Committee members to investigate incidents and to do monthly inspections of the plant physical conditions.

On your next visit to Coatings, ask an employee about OASIS and how it is changing the safety culture at Coatings.

OASIS, short for Observation Aided Safety Improvement System, is a Coatings employee developed and driven process that was designed to proactively improve the safety performance within the Coatings Department.

With the help of a professional safety consultant Quality Safety Edge, the Coatings team, which consisted of diverse individuals nominated from across the manufacturing area and included B&R and PCS maintenance representatives, designed and implemented the entire observation-based behavioral safety process.

QSE helped CITGO develop the plan for a behavioral safety process.

CITGO’s Lake Charles, LA, refinery recently instituted a new safety process that has reaped more positive results than merely improving the facilities' safety record.

“The almost immediate improvement was unbelievable,” said Rixio Medina, manager of safety and industrial hygiene for the CITGO Lake Charles Manufacturing Complex. “Nor only has our safety record improved, but we see an overall better working environment for our employees.”

If at first you don’t succeed...

Each year for the past decade a new safety program has been launched at the Frederick, VA, Tamko Roofing Products plant. And every year the program would last about a month before beginning to fade. But last September employees started training for an intense safety observation process, and it’s still working and improving behaviors, says Gene Burrows, corporate safety director.

What’s the difference? Based on the theory of continual improvement, this process depends on employee interaction. Managers don’t pass down instructions. Communication cuts across the work force, emanating from peer observations.