Gut Feeling

I walked out of the movie theater on a humid summer evening and could smell the rain in the air that must have fallen while I was inside. As I traveled down the puddle-filled sidewalk toward my hotel, in the dim light I noticed a group of young men standing on the street corner. By the way they were acting, I could tell that they where up to no good. I crossed the street and proceeded to my hotel unscathed. Moments after reaching the hotel, police cars rolled up to the street corner with their guns drawn.

I had a gut feeling that something was wrong and I took action to stay safe. Was it something I had just read about or was it something I had seen on TV that made me cross the street? No. That gut feeling was developed over the course of my life.

Do you think the employees involved in the following accident had enough training to give them the same gut feeling? On Thursday Sept. 5, 2010, at about 3 p.m., Sam, while trying to remove debris from the fluff conveyor tail pulley, injured his left arm. He was taken to the urgent care facility where it was confirmed that he had broken the radius bone. He was then transported to a specialist for treatment.

Sam was off work for a week and then returned to a light-duty position for another two weeks.

The event broke the company’s best record of 800 days without a lost-time accident.

FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE

The safety director’s investigation found that the fluff conveyor wasn’t locked out and, in fact, was being remotely operated on and off (called bumping) from the shredder control tower, which was being run by the supervisor. This method is used to rotate the tail pulley to locate the debris that is lodged there, causing the fluff belt to track left or right.

Sam, while being transported for medical treatment, stated that he didn’t know how the accident happened, and it was assumed that he didn’t want to get anyone in trouble.

This occurred in a noisy area—around 85 decibels. Contributing to the noise are the engine cooling towers running overhead about 30 feet, the fluff shaker table running within 3 feet of the area and the shredder’s mill, running about 30 feet away. Sam communicated with the shredder tower by two-way radio. He either did not hear the person in the shredder tower or Sam and the shredder tower were trying to communicate at the same time, canceling out one another.

Rather than feel in his gut that it was dangerous to continue in light of the communication failure, Sam went ahead with the task and was injured in the process. Safety training takes time and repetition, and more was needed in Sam’s case.

A safe workplace begins with the language that is used in that workplace. The longer you allow your employees to work without regard to safety practices, the further they will stray from these practices.

Many companies may be achieving their safety goals, unaware of a lack of communication that may distract them from this goal. Such inattention will keep working to derail a company’s safety program until it is shut down and corrected. The hard part is realizing how the miscommunication or lack of communication originated.

NEED FOR DIRECTION

How many of you remember the Berlin air lift? In 1948 the Russians decided to blockade the city of Berlin in an effort to force the population to submit to communism. The Western Allies countered this move by flying in food and medicine with a bunch of worn out World War II airplanes. Now this little adventure played out during the winter of 1948 – ’49, and winter in Berlin brings terrible flying weather. It’s a succession of low clouds, drizzle and freezing fog. And, back in those days, we didn’t have modern instruments and landing systems that planes have today.

The way airplanes landed in bad weather in those days was with a system called ground-control approach (GCA). The pilot would be up in the cockpit of the airplane and couldn’t see anything through the windshield. On the ground was a radar set and a radio operator. In the cockpit the pilot would hear a droning voice in his earphones: “You are on the glide path, continue your approach.” Or, “You are 50 feet high on the glide path, adjust your rate of descent.” Basically, the radio operator would talk the airplane all the way down to the runway. The most important element of that system was that the radio operator on the ground had to keep talking, never stopping for more than five or six seconds, because, if he did, the pilot would pull back on the throttle and get the heck out of there.

As a safety professional, you can never stop communicating with your employees. They need to hear safety messages reiterated in order to develop the gut feeling they need to avoid dangerous situations. The real value is in the repetition. People will forget most of what they learn in a classroom setting unless there is constant coaching, feedback and review of the material. Think of it as being similar to a sports team that continuously practices the same drills.

To be assured your employees are learning the safety lessons you need them to know, pick out a safety word or phrase daily and have your employees repeat it to you out in the yard every time you ask them to.

The author is director of safety and human resources for City Scrap & Salvage Co., Akron, Ohio. He is also an Occupational Safety and Health Administration authorized trainer and Ohio ambassador, serves as a board member of Summit County Safety Council, as website chair for the Akron Society for Human Resource Management and as the safety committee chair for the Northern Ohio Chapter of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. Newsome can be reached at gnewsome@neo.rr.com.