From the Staffing Experts

ResponsAble Safety Staffing From the Staffing Experts blog archives.

Why Substance Abuse is a Manager’s Problem

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substance abuse

Is substance abuse really a consideration for you as a manager of a professional work environment? Here’s a scary fact you may not have considered… nearly half of all workplace injuries are traced back to substance use. Drug and alcohol abuse on the job is more prevalent than we may think. Or maybe you know, but just haven’t been educated on the implications in your work environment.

Alcohol and drug use is dangerous for a multitude of reasons. Substances inhibit motor skills and cognitive functioning, give a false sense of confidence, impair judgement, decrease efficiency, and negatively effects workplace performance.

As a manager, the cost of substance abuse in your workplace is too high.

So how do you recognize potential substance abuse among your employees?

Common Signs of Employee Substance Abuse

So how do you recognize potential substance abuse among your employees? If you’re not being attentive to the possibility of substance abuse, it can be easy to miss. Don’t make the mistake of assuming you would know if this was an issue among your employees. There are a variety of reasons an individual may engage in substance abuse, and while sometimes it may be obvious, other times it may not be the employee you expect. Here are a few behaviors to take note of and investigate substance abuse if noticed:

  • Consistent or extreme lethargy
  • Frequent breaks or unaccounted for disappearances
  • Erratic behavior or mood swings
  • Inconsistency in hygiene, appearance, or performance
  • Frequent avoidable mistakes
  • Tardiness or failure to show up to work

How to Address Workplace Substance Abuse

Evaluate your culture- alienation and a lack of resources to address emotional life events leads to a higher volume of workplace substance abuse. Offer help to employees and work to create an environment where they know they have resources and support. Some examples could include availability to counseling, team building, supervisor check-ins, bereavement days, etc.

Proper Supervision- A surprising number of staff report that using substances on the job is not as hard as you may think. Increasing supervision is the first line of defense against onsite drinking and drug use.

Safety Training- Use a weekly meeting time to educate employees on the dangers and liability of substance use at work. Make employees aware that you’re serious about safety and teach them about the long-term ramifications of their actions.

Substance Testing- Implement testing at whatever frequency you feel necessary in your workplace. You are within your legal rights to implement these policies in your workplace. Drug and blood alcohol testing are obvious deterrents to use.

Interested in substance use training in your work place? ResponsAble would be happy to come and teach your employees about the dangers and liabilities of workplace use. Call (225) 753-1909 or email us for more information.

Rest: A Workplace Safety Requirement

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Rest and workplace safety

Psychological research shows proven results that taking breaks from your work, in moderation, significantly increases productivity. Yet this is counter-intuitive to how many of our workplaces and even how our culture functions. Is this true for your work place? If so, there’s a few reasons why rest should be prioritized in safety staffing particularly.

Why is rest important in safety staffing?

Rest is important to safety for reasons that are probably fairly obvious. However, it’s so easy to lose perspective when the pressures and responsibilities of a job weigh on our shoulders. Adequate rest is critical to focus and decision-making. Ensuring safety staff have scheduled breaks allows your jobsite to be safer and more efficient.  

Staff fatigue can contribute to carelessness, lack of clarity, and higher risk for your company. A higher quantity of lower quality work should not be the goal of an employer. Particularly in safety staffing, cognitive energy is critical to effective work.  In the end, denying appropriate job-site rest only leads to increased liability, decreased productivity, and unmotivated staff.

Are breaks required on job sites?

Unfortunately, OSHA does not provide required mandates for employee breaks. There are not actually any federal laws in place to regulate work:break ratios. Some states do have guidelines for break requirements, but even here only 22 of the 50 states have these in place.

Therefore, standards for rest and break balance must be generated by the company. Even when these policies are in place it is not uncommon for employees to forego taking advantage of available breaks in an effort to get ahead or make an impression in the workplace. As a company, a culture that encourages rest must be encouraged.

How to implement a good break culture.

If you’re looking to begin to implement policies for rest in your workplace, here are some general rules of thumb to consider.

During a normal work shift of 8 or more hours:

  • • 15-20 minute breaks once or twice throughout the shift.
  • • A meal break of 30 minutes to an hour.

Once your break policies are in place, it is helpful for the manager and employee to introduce the practice in a way that encourages and uplifts utilizing the practice. Staff who feel safe to do so will be more likely to take advantage of the offer. Leadership should also honor the policy by taking advantage of it themselves. This results in a safer and more productive environment for staff and employer!

Your investment in creating a culture that honors proper balance and safety is worth it.

Serious About Plant Safety? What About The Office?

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office safety

For most employers, the bulk of safety emphasis goes toward the shop floor, production, manufacturing, etc.  Machines moving products rapidly around human beings just demands our collective prevention attention.  But what about the office? 

We tend to look at the office environment long enough to see everybody’s going home with all their fingers and toes; it’s all good. 

It’s Not All Good; They Slipping, Tripping and Falling All Over the Place

The Center for Disease Control, CDC, reports office workers are up to 2.5 times more likely to suffer an injury from a fall than non-office workers.  What?!?!?

Yep, office workers get lulled into safety complacency just like anyone will when they don’t recognize the hazards.  There are many potential slip, trip and fall hazards in a typical office setting.

  • • Wet or slippery floors
  • • Objects on floors such as open drawers, electrical cords, carpeting, items left in walkways
  • • Poor visibility or lighting
  • • Use of furniture in place of a proper latter to reach elevated items
  • • Unsafe or unstable footwear

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome anyone? 

If your office workers are careful to avoid all those slip, trip and fall hazards, how are they doing with the long hours on the computer? 

Bureau of Labor Statistics, BLS, data reveals musculoskeletal disorders, MSD’s, account for over $ 15 billion in worker’s compensation costs annually. 

MSD’s are associated with many of the type of activities common in office work. 

  • • Sitting still for long periods of time
  • • Poor posture for long durations; improper ergonomics
  • • Repetitive small motor movement such as typing
  • • Lack of work breaks

Lifting Not So Heavy Loads

Poor lifting technique can lead to injury even with relatively light loads.  The act of lifting is intrinsically hard on our back, neck and shoulders especially if we use improper form.  Additional risk comes for people who are not physically fit or have prior injuries that may re-occur with even a small strain. 

Common causes of lifting injuries

  • • Lifting something that is too heavy
  • •Not asking for help
  • • Bending from the waste instead of squatting and using legs
  • • Grabbing with finger tips
  • • Twisting while carrying a heavy item

The risk factors described above are by no means an exhaustive list but simply some highlights to raise awareness around office safety.  The injuries and risk associated with the office environment just don’t tend to get our full attention when stacked up next to heavy industrial settings; but it should. 

Put the same Safety, Health and Environmental zeal into protecting your office workers as you do for any employee.  Make sure your training and accountability for the office staff is on par with any other role but match the curriculum and expectations to the office threats. 

Ensuring your office operates safely is right for your employees and right for your business.  If you want a safe plant, you need a safe office.

Deceptive Winter Hydration

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winter dehydration

With colder temperatures and less tangible loss of fluids, it’s easy to lose track of your hydration. Being mindful of your fluid intake and hydration levels is a lot harder to do when you’re not seeing beads of sweat of feeling the effects of scorching heat. However, this only increases the threat of dehydration.

Dehydration is a year-round threat. It occurs any time you use or lose more fluids than you take in, causing your body to lack what it needs to continue its normal functioning. This can occur regardless of temperature. Appropriate water intake is critical to your body’s functioning, and it will begin to shut down without appropriate fluid levels.

Some common misconceptions for winter months may be that if you’re not sweating you’re not losing as much fluids, or a lack of thirst indicates adequate hydration. However, the winter simply presents new challenges for hydration. The air is drier and requires higher lung functioning. The harder our bodies work, the more fluids are needed. Our bodies are also naturally processing fluids throughout the day, so replenishment is necessary regardless of external circumstances.

Signs of Dehydration

  • • Extreme thirst
  • • Less frequent urination
  • • Dark-colored urine
  • • Fatigue
  • • Dizziness
  • • Confusion

Be mindful of these symptoms for yourself and those around you. The deceptive nature of colder weather may compromise the safety others.

Combatting Winter Dehydration

The first step is mindfulness. Now you know that hydration is a critical component of health and safety regardless of the season.

Make a plan for intaking the same amount of fluids, even when you’re not prompted by thirst. Set a goal for ounces consumed per day and use that to determine effective hydration.

Be mindful that not all liquids are created equal. Common beverages of choice in the cold, such as coffee or tea with caffeine, actually have the opposite effect. The same is true for soda. Water is the best hydrator, but in colder months herbal teas that are caffeine free can be beneficial as well.

Consider the safety of yourself and others as you consider making a concerted effort toward hydration. It is easy to prevent, but also easy to experience. Make a system and implement accountability in hydration on your team.

My Top 5 Safety Audit Findings

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We’ve written about the importance of building and maintaining a Safety Culture more times than I can recall and I would bet that anyone seeing this post agrees that a Safety Culture is mission critical for their business.  One of the tools that helps reinforce and encourage the importance of the elements that make up a Safety Culture is the Safety Audit. 

Routine but unannounced Safety Audits can really help your staff think and act when they see an unsafe condition or behavior.

This post should encourage you to consider whether you or your business could benefit from effective use of Safety Audits by sharing my top 5, or could also be my bottom 5, findings during unannounced Safety Audits.   Deciding upon what order I should put them in was harder than I thought.

No. 5:  The dreaded open file drawers. 

In spite of our numerous training sessions on trip hazards in the office environment, I received a citation for open file drawers on many of my safety audits.  It seems benign to leave the drawer open while you take a few minutes to make copies, but the struggle is real with regard to trip hazards within the office.  Don’t make the mistake of ignoring safety hazards in the administrative areas of your work place. 

No. 4:  Unmarked or mismarked liquid containers.

The mechanical shop was the big offender.  Waste oil in unmarked containers, soapy water solutions used for leak detection in mismarked spray bottles and my personal favorite citation – an unidentified liquid believed to be a motor fuel such as diesel in a coke bottle marked as ok for human consumption.  It’s hard enough to keep your MSDS files accurate and current without the added creativity of some staff.

No. 3: A dry eye wash station.

In a relatively remote work area with limited access to utilities, someone forgot to return water service to the eye wash station after scheduled maintenance.  Of course we audited “right before” they were going to open the valve and test it; just bad timing I guess. 

No 2: Improper or inadequate PPE.

While not an excuse, I was always most empathetic to this one where hand protection / gloves was the issue.  A craftsman using their hands for work will at times feel they need the dexterity of bare fingers to properly perform the task.  Proper procedures and training are critical to aligning Personal Protective Equipment requirements with employee compliance. 

No 1:  Inadequate or blocked egress.

The most egregious, outrageous, ridiculous safety violation I ever witnessed wins the number 1 spot.  A damaged door latch prevented an exterior door to an automotive shop from staying closed.  This door was the only egress at the very rear of the shop so it was also the only way out to avoid any fire, fumes or other hazard that may occur in the work area.  Being a cold winter week when the door latch was damaged, some innovative soul threaded heavy gauge wire through a hole in the door and adjacent frame to firmly secure the door.  Egress from a cloud of fumes or fire would have required long handled metal snips and a clear minded, strong worker to escape. 

There have been many unsafe conditions show themselves during the course of routine Safety Audits over the years.  The examples described above should never occur where the safety culture is mature. 

One tool in your Safety Tool Box is the Safety Audit to identify opportunities to improve your safety culture and help your team to keep safety awareness as the priority it deserves. 

The Top Five Safety Audit Findings above are just a few examples of how employees can lose focus on safety.  We would love to hear your stories that may help us all improve. 

Overcoming Safety Challenges in a Turnaround

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safety staffing contractor

If you have planned for a plant shutdown or turnaround, or are currently managing one, then you have encountered the associated risk and safety hazards.  All good employers make safety the top priority while the turnaround will also be evaluated based upon quality, schedule and budget.  

How do you effectively drive high quality work on schedule and within budget without compromising safety?  

Build and maintain a safety culture with accountability.  

There are a lot of moving parts to your turnarounds with multiple contractors and subcontractors.  All these moving parts can threaten the integrity of your safety culture without a solid framework to keep everyone accountable to the safety mission.  

The blocking and tackling required to execute the quality of work, adherence to schedule and budget can begin to push against the zero tolerance nature of effective safety compliance.  While we know recognizing and preventing hazards is key to a safe workplace, as long as humans continue to work, there will be accidents.  Minimizing the risk of incident given that humans are working amongst changing hazards is key.  

How do you minimize the risk of a safety incident on your job?  

  • • Recognize the hazard
  • • Communicate
  • • Act to mitigate the threat 

If you can improve the turnaround team’s performance on these three points, you will minimize the risk of having an accident on your job.  

How do you improve the turnaround team’s performance on these three points?

  • • Assure there are experienced Safety Specialists and Techs working your turnaround
  • • Keep the experienced Safety Specialists and Techs out of the line of production management reporting

By having experienced Safety Specialists, Techs and other safety roles out of the production reporting chain of command, you maximize the total team accountability to the safety culture and zero tolerance mandate.  

Having Experienced Safety Staff means people whose primary role is Safety and who is fully competent in recognizing hazards, communicating effectively and knows how to act to support mitigation of a threatening situation.  

Just as you need your welders to be highly competent specialists who answer to the quality of their welds, so you also need Safety Staff from top to bottom who are highly competent and are not unduly influenced by any competing priorities such as schedule or budget.

It may seem of little consequence to many Turnaround Managers or Planners how the Safety staff is sourced for their project, but the impact of Safety Staff sourcing can be quite significant.  There is wisdom in helping your turnaround employees and contractors succeed by having Safety Staff as a stand alone team; out of the line of production supervision.  Minimize the risk associated with having the “fox watching the hen house.” 

What is a major step forward toward overcoming safety challenges during a turnaround?

Include an experienced Safety Staffing Contractor on your turnaround for all safety related positions where roles are not already filled by the owners’ safety staff.   

We help staff for turnarounds so have to identify these challenges and make it a priority to plan and communicate well so that things go smoothly.

If you are need of temporary labor or safety professionals during a turnaround, give us a call. Even if you have run into an obstacle toward the end of a turnaround, we may be able to provide qualified staff to handle the job. To learn more about the positions we staff and our process, please see here: https://responsablestaffing.com/safety-staffing/