SAFETY BLOG

Worthington Industries presents an outside the box solution to safety programs.  An article in EHS Today by Terry Leberfinger reported that Worthington Industries has been using a radical program for increasing safety and lowering accidents and safety related costs in their workplace.  A leading diversified metals processing company with 8,000 employees and 64 facilities worldwide have been relying on their employees to define safety in the workplace.

Traditional safety programs start from the top and work their way down to baseline employees.  Company administrators decide where the hazards exist, create policies to manage those hazards, and implement trainings and media to enforce the policies.  Since 2001, Worthington has been working from the ground up.  The train-of-thought here is that safety programs need to be defined by those that are facing hazards and responsible for abating them.  They call it the Safe Works program.

Highlights of Safe Works:

• provides standardization and sharing of company-wide best practices
• program is rooted in employee empowerment and communication
• voluntary safety councils are made up of employees at all levels
• program focuses on developing safe behaviors and the preventing of injuries through positive reinforcement
• PPE is tried, tested, and selected by the employees themselves
• zero incidents are rewarded in a comprehensive reward program

In the seven years that Worthington has been supporting the Safe Works program they have had:

•  one-third reduction in serious injuries
• 27 percent reduction in total injuries (OSHA recordable)
• 22 percent decrease in number of worker's comp claims
• reduced cut-related injuries by 41 percent

This form of proactive, outside the box thinking is starting safety down a new path.  Congratulations to Worthington Industries to a job well done.

Read the whole article at EHS Today.  http://ehstoday.com/safety/best-practices/workplace-safety-trust-employees-0309/