contributed by Monica Washington, Safety
Coordinator, Farnsworth Group
AWARENESS of safety
is something that our company has always maintained, but with renewed focus we
are elevating the importance of keeping employees safe. We are learning from
our past, the good things we are doing and identifying opportunities to
improve. We are enhancing the good to make it great and implementing
improvements to strengthen any programs. As part of the key to awareness, each
manager meets monthly with their group to focus on safety and how it relates to
their team and their job duties. The managers are getting more involved with
safety and they are engaging their teams with safety in a positive approach.
TRAINING, the
second key to our strategy focuses on understanding the risks and providing
training to minimize those hazards to keep our employees safe. Safety training
at Farnsworth Group takes many forms from classroom training to online to on the job
training. Over 65% of our staff has taken the OSHA 10-Hour Construction
Industry Training. Other trainings include special industry training as well as
general safety training. Our training style and methods are evolving allowing
us to incorporate training into our every day job responsibilities.
Awareness
and training support the third key of safety which is ACCOUNTABILITY. Employees are held accountable to work safe each
day, complete training in a timely manner and wear personal protective equipment. Looking out for coworkers as well as their
own wellbeing is critical to building a culture of safety. The requirement to
report incidents and address near misses helps us to be proactive in our
approach to safety.
Finally, RECOGNITION encompasses all the other
keys of safety by celebrating accomplishments and rewarding staff for safe
behavior. We are in our infancy developing strong recognitions around safety
but plan to flush out and continue to make this a strong focus in 2014.
