Posts filed under ‘Safe and Healthy Workplaces’
Can engaged employees transform the U.S. economy?
Alex Pollock
Now that the world population has surpassed the seven billion marker, the “sustainability” word is getting lots of play once again. The call-to-action bugles are again warning us of a pending global catastrophe. What could suddenly create “worldwide peace, global well-being and extraordinary advancement in human development?”
In a new book, “The Coming Jobs War,” author Jim Clifton says a solution is the appearance of a whopping 1.8 billion “good” jobs. These are jobs that provide at least 30 hours of work per week and a steady pay check. Clifton believes that the country that can best achieve job growth coupled with GDP growth will be the dominant world force.
Can the United States be this global force?
Clifton believes the explosion of entrepreneurship that GDP growth requires won’t happen here until the country doubles its number of “engaged” employees: those who are using their talents every day, yielding great results, emotionally committed and are working consistently with high energy and enthusiasm.
This number currently stands at 28 percent nationally. Going from 30 million to 60 million engaged workers will “change the face of America more than any leadership institution, trillions of stimulus dollars, or any law or policy imaginable,” Clifton argues.
But as long as “one in five U.S. managers are “dangerously lousy,” these “high-energy workplaces” will elude us, Clifton says. “Fire all lousy managers today” is an imperative, he argues, because nothing fixes bad managers: not coaching, competency training, incentives or warnings. In his experience “bad managers never get better.”
What’s your reaction to his analysis? Clearly there is an opportunity for each of us is to contribute to the creation of these attractive “high energy workplaces” where we willingly give our best every day. We just can’t just afford to be a passive observer on this one.
Increasing EHS Value in Tough Economic Times
Mark Posson
Can we do more with less? Absolutely! This tough economy is affecting all aspects of an organization and environmental management is not immune. Today’s reality in most organizations is stagnant or declining resources and a continuing mandate to increase environmental performance. We need to resist the tendency to pull back in tough economic times and instead be introspective and improve the way we execute. We can free up the resources to meet the demands of expanding requirements by continually improving our business processes. The increased efficiency will free up resources and the increased effectiveness will boost performance and stakeholder value.
Strategically, what processes provide the greatest value to our stakeholders? Where can we get our biggest return for the time invested? These basic questions will help prioritize your improvement targets and possibly identify processes that can be eliminated. A ranked list of processes for improvement will guide your pace of change and tactical execution.
Tactically, the simplest path to improve a process is to follow the elements of lean:
- Identify the value to the stakeholder (your customers)
- Determine the sequence of activities (current process flow)
- Identify the activities that create value
- Eliminate activities that do not add value
- Identify process inefficiencies and their cause(s)
- Eliminate the cause(s) of inefficiencies
- Create the new process (future process flow)
- Implement the new process
- Measure results
The steps are simple but often challenging to implement in light of day-to-day execution pressures. We can’t expect different outcomes by following the same processes. The investment in process improvement will provide the payback in better results with fewer resources.
What strategies do you use to do more with less?
Mark Posson is the former Director of Environment, Safety and Health at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. and the current Chair of the city of Pleasanton’s Energy and Environment Committee. He recently began offering consulting services to help organizations improve their environment, safety and health performance.
Ergonomic Success Requires Leadership
Walt Rostykus
Over the years, I’ve met environment, health and safety (EHS) managers who are convinced that by driving safety and ergonomics through a grassroots approach, some day the initiative will catch on with supervisors, managers and company leaders as an infectious commitment.
“If you build it, he will come” may have worked for Ray Kinsella in the movie “Field of Dreams”, but let’s get real folks: This approach is a shot in the dark for quickly and effectively improving and sustaining safety and performance in the workplace.
Indeed, the key elements of leadership in maintaining an effective and sustainable ergonomic improvement process are no different than those of an EHS system, company culture, or any other aspect of a business. The bottom line is that leadership must occur from the top.
A wise person once noted, “What interests my manager motivates me.” This is the key to leading a safety and ergonomics process over time. Think about it: At work your priorities and activities are guided by how your manager tracks and measures your performance. It is our experience that when managers, engineers, supervisors and employees have a clear understanding of their involvement in the effort to improve workplace ergonomics (and they are held accountable to those expectations), effective workplace changes are made.
Yet leading an ergonomics process is not usually intuitive to many in top management roles. As an EHS manager, however, you are in a position to coach top management on the few things they need to do; simply put, they need to hold their direct reports accountable for ergonomics performance (see my prior blog on effective goals and metrics for ergonomics). The four most important things they can do to make sure this happens are:
- Set clear expectations (responsibilities, goals, roles, targets)
- Provide people with the resources, tools and training they need to meet their responsibilities
- Visibly and actively monitor and track progress
- Take action when expectations are not met
Fortunately this four-step approach is not foreign to managers and supervisors. They follow some form of these steps to complete work, build widgets and manage production. Leaders in safety should apply the same approach (accountability) to influence, guide and lead their organization to success. It’s all about planning, managing and following through.
Kurt, my climbing instructor from several decades ago, was a great illustration of how not to lead by example. His immortal words “Do as I say, not as I do” sent a mixed message. While he told us to wear the correct helmet and always climb while belayed, he climbed bare-headed and without a lifeline. He was technically knowledgeable, but clearly not a leader.
On the contrary, Dave Packard, Bill Hewlett and Bob Hall were true leaders, who set expectations for performance (including safety) and held people, including general managers, accountable for the quality and safety of their workplace.
Whether you base your company ergonomics program on Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) models, the Safety Management System, lean manufacturing or continuous improvement, strong and visible leadership by people in top management is critical for ensuring that engineers design tools to fit the first time; employee teams reduce exposure to work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSD) risk factors before injuries occur; and that employees adjust their own work stations to best fit them.
If improving ergonomics is a priority for your organization, does your top management team lead by example? Have they set performance expectations, goals, and clear roles? Do they track performance?
If not, what have you done to best prepare them to lead?
What Makes Ergonomics “Green”?
Walt Rostykus
As a break from my planned series on the key strategic elements of successful ergonomics management systems, I want to share some insight from James Good, President of Humantech Inc., regarding ergonomics and LEED. Jim writes:
The ergonomic conditions of a building are neither as obvious nor as intuitive as safety and security.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) defines ergonomics as the science of fitting workplace conditions and job demands to the capabilities of the working population. Effective and successful “fits” increase productivity, reduce illness and injury risks, and increase worker satisfaction.
One assumes that, by definition, any program or initiative that reduces waste, increases productivity and reduces worker injury or illness—and does more with less—is inherently a conservation activity. But let’s dig a little deeper.
The main objectives of sustainable design are to avoid resource depletion of energy, water and raw materials (conservation); prevent environmental degradation caused by facilities and infrastructure throughout their life cycle; and create built environments that are livable, comfortable, safe and productive.
Protecting the health, safety and security of a building’s occupants has expanded beyond disease prevention and nuisance control. It now includes considerations for mental as well as physical health and productivity through the creation of places that exhilarate and delight as they exhibit the realization of human creative potential.
Healthy, comfortable employees are invariably more satisfied and productive. Unfortunately, this simple, compelling truth is often lost, for it is simpler to focus on the first-cost of a project than it is to determine the value of increased user productivity and health. Facilities should be constructed with a focus on providing high-quality interior environments for all users.
Over ten years ago, the U.S. General Services Association (the nation’s landlord) concluded in The Integrated Workplace: A Comprehensive Approach to Developing Workspace that “since people are the most important resource and greatest expense of any organization, the long-term cost benefits of a properly designed, user-friendly work environment should be factored into any initial cost considerations.”
With the launch of LEED® 2009, the U.S. Green Building Council recognized the value of workplace ergonomics as a proactive process. The Innovation in Design Process category provides for five possible points, of which one point can be obtained for good ergonomic design of existing or planned workspaces.
What constitutes good ergonomic design? “A comprehensive ergonomics strategy that will have a positive impact on human health and comfort when performing daily activity for at least 75 percent of Full Time Equivalent building users.”
While environmental sustainability focuses on the impact of building design on the environment, ergonomics focuses on the impact of the building work environment on the occupant. Good ergonomic design is a critical element of building design; it can significantly hamper or greatly enhance the performance of occupants.
So, what is your choice?
NRG Energy’s strategies for enterprise compliance
Tony Shea
At NRG Energy, environmental compliance is a management commitment. Through the pillars of its environmental management program, the Princeton, N.J.-based company delivers on this commitment in the approximately 42 power plants it owns and operates throughout the United States. This week, we caught up with Senior Manager of Environmental Business Tony Shea to discuss the company’s successful compliance strategies.
GT: When it comes to building a successful environmental management program, where do you begin?
TS: It starts with commitment from the very top of the company that environmental compliance is an absolute must. For NRG, that commitment is reflected in our environmental statement and our core values, and we do not make compliance decisions based on economics or other circumstances. It is understood that our plants simply must comply. And that commitment is constantly reaffirmed by our top management down through the plant management.
GT: Once the management commitment is in place, how do you embed compliance into the day-to-day operations?
TS: When we’re talking about power-generating facilities, compliance is a factor in many decisions operators make while on the job. At NRG we try to keep potential environmental impacts at the forefront of everyone’s thinking as we perform our daily decisions and actions.
In 2007, we implemented a system to track environmental compliance performance called the Environmental Key Performance Indicator (EKPI), which tracks incidents such as permit violations, notices of violation, reportable spills and even administrative compliance. The EKPI also accounts for each location’s participation in our econrg initiative, which includes projects focusing on environmental stewardship, greenhouse gas reduction, or water conservation projects in our local communities.
At the beginning of each year, every facility gets a target score. To reach the maximum EKPI score, the facilities need to have a perfect compliance record, and that score is ultimately tied into the bonus of every employee at the plant. Over the past four years I think it has really changed the mindset to reinforce the message that environmental compliance is everyone’s job.
Training is also a critical component of compliance. We’ve improved operator training, enabling them to better understand environmental requirements and potential impacts as they make decisions in their day-to-day operations.
GT: What are the other elements of your program?
TS: In addition to our EKPI, our environmental management information system (EMIS) and our audit program also help us ensure compliance.
We initially implemented our EMIS across all of our generating facilities in early January 2007. That initial roll-out included using it for our EKPI and for tracking environmental events. Shortly thereafter, we began using the EMIS to track any environmental responsibilities that come from permits or environmental regulation. If it’s something that can be scheduled, we’ve scheduled it into that system. The system then sends an email to the employee responsible for making sure it gets done. We’ve seen significant improvement over the years in administrative compliance thanks to our task tracking system.
Every significant facility also gets audited annually by an independent, third-party consulting firm. One unique aspect of our EKPI is that audit findings do not count negatively. We want to find all potential issues and correct them. Audit findings only impact a facility’s EKPI score if the corrective actions are not completed in a timely manner, or if there are repeat findings from year to year. We believe this sends the right message to the employees and encourages a collaborative relationship between the auditors and plants. We want perfect compliance, so it is important to identify potential risks or weaknesses and address them immediately. Our senior management and our plant management are on board with that and welcome the audits.
Tony Shea will share more details about NRG’s compliance program at NAEM’s EHS Compliance Excellence Conference on July 27-28 in Minneapolis.
Collaborating on compliance
James Bilgo
For James Bilgo, Supervisor of EHS Program Management for Kohler Co., ensuring regulatory compliance is a unique challenge. A diverse manufacturing and services company, Kohler has more than 80 ‘facilities’ worldwide, including small tractor factories, high-end furniture showrooms, sales offices, spas, hotels and even golf courses. They all share the Kohler name, though, and Bilgo’s auditing team works hard to protect it. We caught up with him this week to talk about the company’s auditing programs and how he helped build a strong compliance culture.
GT: Today, the Kohler Co. is known for its strong culture of compliance. How did your team achieve that?
JB: Going back 25 years ago, we were probably like most companies in that we would go to our operations and spend a week there walking through their facilities and doing what everybody would call your environmental, health and safety (EHS) audit. We would then write up a report and then walk away.
What we noticed was that we started seeing the same thing, time after time at all our facilities. And we just said, ‘We need to take a different approach to this. We need to be part of their team. We have to build up that comfort level so if they have that problem, we’re the people they think about calling.’
So what we’ve done over the past 20 years is to develop systems that cooperatively and proactively show our operations the path to improvement. We then train them, help them, encourage them, and basically do whatever we can to help them get there.
GT: Can you describe what your inspections are like now?
JB: Today our visits don’t feel like inspections. Our facilities actually ask us, ‘When are you going to come next? We really need you here. We want to show you some of the good things we’re doing; we want to get this next tier level of performance.’
When we walk through a facility now, we don’t walk around and point out problems; we walk around and look at things. And many times, the things that stop us in our tracks are good things.
GT: When there is a problem, what kinds of things do you do to help them solve those problems?
JB: When there is an issue, we try not to just be critical; we want to be very positive. A lot of times we have a discussion, the facility managers make suggestions and we add our expertise about what other plants are doing.
We also have a Web page, where we put all of our best practices and all of the programs we think the facilities should be pursuing. When someone has done a good job, we put their best practice out there for everybody to look at and share.
Every year, we hold an EHS conference, where we bring in all our EHS people from all of our operations all over the world to share best practices, and figure out how to solve the problems. And when someone does have a problem, we end up sharing the solution with everyone so it’s more of a cooperative effort.
GT: How do you train your team to ensure they provide the right direction to the facilities?
JB: The guys who work for me, very seldom get technical training. I train my people more on how to have a crucial conversation, how to be a leader, how to have emotional intelligence so they can communicate in a very positive way to the operations. That’s a lot of what my guys take to the facility.
Our department has three main purposes. The first is protecting the Kohler brand. It’s very important that when people think of Kohler they think ‘They’re the guys with the really nice golf courses,’ or ‘They’re the guys who make those fantastic bathtubs.’ We want people to think about Kohler and think about great company, great quality. Two, we want to send all of our associates home in better condition than they were in when they arrived in the morning. And the third is, minimizing the impacts of our operations on the environment and on future generations. So all of our programs are geared to one of those three main objectives and that’s what we tell our operations.
GT: Can you describe how you’ve structured your system?
JB: Ours is a tiered system, in which the facilities are recognized for their achievements.
On the safety side, we developed the Kohler safety management system, a very detailed roadmap for operations to achieve world-class safety performance. We looked at other programs out there, developed our own and distributed it to the facilities. At first, everybody went through it and tried to find the easy things — and not necessarily the right things to do first.
So we found out that we kind of made a mistake there. You’ve got to build. You have to have a good foundation first before you can put on the roof. So we went back and we looked at the whole system, identified our expectations and prioritized the issues. Is this an issue that falls into Tier 1 (compliance); Tier 2 (management commitment); Tier 3 (Has it been adopted by all associates?); or Tier 4 (There’s no reason for us to even come and look at their operation)?
We’ve had this going for eight to ten years and we’re still heading down the path.
GT: What are some of the hallmarks of Tier 4?
JB: To reach Tier 4, the assessment involves going out and interviewing the associates on the floor, asking them questions and seeing how they answer.
What we’re looking for is whether they expound upon their answers and show us more than what we asked. If so, they’re portraying a positive EHS attitude and demonstrating that by showing us what they’re doing. To reach the highest tier on the environmental side, for example, they should be able to look in the garbage can and say, ‘See? We don’t even need garbage cans here because we don’t throw anything out anymore.’ We’re not there yet, but that’s what you want them to ultimately say.
GT: Do you still have checklists?
JB: We do have an assessment tool that asks specific questions that we confirm through documentation, interview or observation. It then explains what we should specifically be looking for. On Tier 1 it’s mostly show me the documentation; at Tier 4, it’s right to the interview and the observation. Is it very obvious to me that they understand it and they are living it?
GT: How do you ensure they maintain their status?
JB: We have a safety group (outside of our team) that does a complete assessment of the Tier 3 and Tier 4 facilities. Every few years, they will go back and reassess the operation to ensure it is maintaining its status. It’s my team’s responsibility to continue to work with the plant to keep up the good work.
James Bilgo is the Supervisor of EHS Program Management for Kohler Co. He will discuss the company’s collaborative auditing programs at NAEM’s upcoming “EHS Compliance Excellence” event on July 27-28 in Minneapolis.
Extending the productivity of our most experienced employees
Blake McGowan
By 2016, workers age 65 and over are expected to account for 6.1 percent of the total labor force, up sharply from their 3.6 percent share in 2006, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This demographic shift means companies will continue to benefit from the experience of seasoned employees, but likely will need to address a new set of ergonomic needs. This week, we spoke to Blake McGowan, Ergonomic Engineer with Humantech Inc., to understand what companies can do to maintain the productivity of their most valuable workers.
GT: For those who aren’t familiar with the term, can you quickly explain, ‘What is ergonomics’?
BM: Ergonomics is a science focused on designing the workstation characteristics to match the worker’s capabilities and make that job intuitive for the worker to do. We try to address things that are in within an arm’s reach, such as a control, a computer screen, a materials handling task, or an assembly line.
GT: Why do companies invest in ergonomics?
BM: Traditional reasons are reducing injuries and injury costs. A company might have high number of injuries, high frequency of injuries or a high amount of worker compensation costs, and they realize the root cause of that is the design of the work station and what the person is able to do.
Many companies also have started to realize that when we apply the principles of ergonomics in a systematic way, there are all these extra benefits, such as improving operator performance, improving safety, reducing injuries, increasing the productivity of a facility and enhancing the quality of a product. So that’s what gets people motivated to do this and I would say the majority of the Fortune 500 companies understand that and use it as a business advantage. It’s a way to cut costs and enhance performance.
GT: How do you know if you need to invest in ergonomics for an aging workforce?
BM: From a pure population standpoint, we know from the Bureau of Labor statistics that the age category of people under age 25 is decreasing so we won’t have as many people coming into the workforce. And on the other side of it, we know that people who are close to retirement are going to be forced to continue working because they may not have that financial stability; their 401K may no longer look the way they want it to, and who knows if Social Security will be there in the future? Some of the statistics show that there will be people working into their 70’s and some of those individuals will have to do manual labor.
A lot of companies are also beginning to realize that they need to have experienced workers in their organization in order to be successful. These are the experienced people in the workplace; who have been with the company for many years, who understand the unwritten worlds, how to solve complex problems, so we definitely need to figure out ways to keep them.
GT: How do the ergonomic needs of older workers compare to those of younger workers?
BM: When we start to talk about the aging population, we need to first define is who we’re talking about. Many people are surprised to learn that by about age 45, we start to experience changes in our physiological systems. Our strength, speed, coordination, vision, memory and information processing all are affected by the aging process. The reason why we need to understand these things is because they will have implications on how we work.
GT: What are some of the areas that ergonomics can address?
BM: It could be as simple as providing people with correct working heights or changing the way workstations are lit. One of the things that happens as we start to age is that we’re not able to see things as well. What might have worked well with the lights on the ceiling when we’re 20 may not be the case when we turn 55. So there might be a need to modify the workplace so we provide each person in each age category with task lighting. That way they can see everything in the right way.
It also could be a lot more complex, such as reducing strength requirements for job tasks. That would be a big deal, especially in heavy manufacturing. The fact that our strength might be decreasing doesn’t mean that we’re no longer a valuable member of the company. What we can do is to use some very good principles to help this person be as effective as possible. For example, the mere step of providing someone the objects that they’ll be handling in a materials handling situation at the correct height to ensure that that person can extend their career and continue to add value to the company. If we don’t design that material handling task for that experienced person, we’re know that over time they’re more likely to get injured, which would take them away from work.
The goal of ergonomics is to design for what people do well so we have to get to that baseline first. The next thing is how to improve our systems that the extra 5 or 10 percent to address the needs of our most experienced, valuable workers.
Blake McGowan is a Managing Consultant and Ergonomic Engineer with Humantech Inc. He’ll be presenting solutions for addressing the ergonomic needs of older workers in NAEM’s “Ergonomics of an Aging Workforce” webinar on May 24.
Recognizing the “unsung” environmental heroes
Carol Singer Neuvelt
In honor of Earth Day, I’d like to take a moment to recognize and thank you, our members, for your contributions to the health and safety of our planet.
While much of the public discourse about improving the environment focuses on individual actions, few understand or know how to address the large scale impacts of corporate activities. This is essentially what environmental, health and safety (EHS) managers do by creating company-wide systems to reduce pollution, improve worker safety and, now today, move the conversation about sustainability forward.
Without your tireless work to lessen corporate environmental impacts, we would not have achieved the return of clean waterways, reclaimed land in urban centers, widespread recycling and the expectation that workers will return home each night safe and sound.
This comfort and security, largely held in the developed world, is a profound luxury we often take for granted.
To take it a step further, we don’t often get the opportunity to learn about what goes into the design, manufacture and delivery of the products that make our lives comfortable. From the ability to cook food in the warmth our well-lit homes, travel freely across the globe and share information instantly using home computers, we all rely on a host of modern industries to sustain our daily lives. But as Dr. Daniel Goleman asserted at last year’s EHS Management Forum, these modern comforts have many unseen impacts. Your work helps minimize these negative impacts, allowing the rest of us to enjoy the benefits of these products we rely on.
So today, I take my hat off you each of you, and join with the rest of the NAEM staff in saying ‘thank you’ for the work you do to protect our environment and keep workers safe on the job.
We’ve come a long way, and I’m excited to watch you address and solve the challenges that come before us.
