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HRP’s Tad Goetcheus on National Safety Month

June 9th, 2022 by Tad Goetcheus

Is June the best month? It might be the perfect weather month, but June has more than just mild days and cool nights going for it. Each June we also observe national safety month.

Founded in 1996 by the National Safety Council (NSC), this observance is designed to focus people across business and industries on how to make their working environment safer. National Safety month is divided into four weeks, each with a different theme. I sat down with HRP COO and President, Tad Goetcheus, PE to talk about each week’s safety topics.

Tad:  First and foremost, safety is not a one-month focus, it is a long-haul exercise.  Safety is never a static implementation; it is always dynamic. This is especially true within the last few years with a depleted workforce or workforces that can sometimes go through 25-40% turnover within a year’s time. Because of the changing nature of a workforce, it is easy for a company to fall off with compliance, inspection, and behavior-based training. Just look at the recent Great Resignation, that kind of turnover makes it difficult to keep up with the dynamic nature of implementation. Collaborating with our clients can be challenging in regard to safety procedures and practice implementation and improvements. That is why you have to be nimble to make compliance. You have to get complete plant by in. Start by looking at the culture of a plant or facility and determine what will work for that culture.

Week 1 Musculoskeletal Disorders

Tom: Musculoskeletal Disorders, or MSDs, are identified by the National Safety Council as the leading cause of workplace injury. What methods does HRP employ to meet this challenge?

Tad: Ergonomics is the science that addresses the prolonged risk factors with a workplace that cause MSD’s. In essence ergonomics is the science of fitting the job to the worker, whether it be tasks conducted within the office, construction, industrial manufacturing, assembly, or warehouse. There are no specific regulations for ergonomics, so experience, problem solving, and critical thinking come to the forefront for our staff.

When a client requests HRP to provide professional assistance to review MSD issues at a job site, we typically perform an audit, where we review site-based safety plans, inspections and logs, and employee training associated with applicable OSHA standards to the site operations. In addition, the review of OSHA 300/301 logs and worker compensation records valuable information and trends can be ascertained. However and HRP assessment is not just a paperwork exercise, as an ergonomic assessment includes the physical review of employment activity to research and review activities where potential activities causing MSD’s can be identified such as: exertion of excessive force, repetition of movements, awkward postures, static postures, compression, bending and twisting during job functions, and associated and even excessive work periods and inadequate rest and recovery time.

Week 2 Workplace Impairment

Tom: The National Safety Council points out that workplace impairment is more than just inebriation, but also must include things like stress and fatigue. What approach to this issue would HRP recommend?

Tad: With safety there is a different approach for every client and how they go about the implementation of a safety program.   A facility needs to look at what type of culture they want to have. Some facilities unfortunately do the bare minimum and just meet the OSHA standard with a written plan, a pencil whipped inspection, and generic employee training with little to no interaction for employee suggestion or improvements.  On the other hand, some facilities implement behavior-based safety programs. Here a program is designed to influence employee actions toward safer outcomes, ideally by preventing an accident or injury before it occurs. Employee behavior can be the basis for training, implementation, and comprehension

A behavior-based safety approach seems to be especially effective when it comes to stress and mental health aspect of impairment. By having awareness programs, mental health and employee health awareness interactions, counseling, alternative work schedules, and out of the box thinking for stress management improves employee morale, build trust, mental wellbeing and almost always makes an employee happy and content. It can be guaranteed that since 2020 almost all companies changed the way that business was conducted, with some changes here to stay. Those changes almost always had a dedicated component to employee mental health and wellbeing. A focused and stress-free employee is more likely to be a safe employee in the work place It is said a happy and content employee is a hard working and focused employee who has no issue in working harder or extra to achieve company goals, whether it be production or revenue.

Week 3 Injury Prevention

Tom: In week three we are looking at injury prevention, its prevalence, and how to reduce it.

Tad: There is a great deal of analysis that goes into injury prevention, specially through what is referred to as a job hazard analysis or JHA. A JHA is a process that focuses a job task as a way to identify hazards before they result in injury. The JHA is an assessment on the relationship between the worker, the task, the tools and equipment, and the work environment itself and identifies control to reduce or eliminate the hazard.  

In addition, an assessment can incorporate an analysis of team dynamics, historical workplace injuries, industrial peer group statistics, and general workflow patterns to control, reduce and even eliminate hazards. Solutions, as simple as adjusting floor height on an assembly line, modified positioning of air tooling or spray guns and their application and contact depths and heights. Example of modifications from JHA’s could include rotation of staff, improved traction of flooring, ventilation modifications, use of PPE, increased lighting, among others.

A job hazard analysis is a dynamic action at the workplace, environments can change frequently, and as such JHA’s should be reviewed, assessed, updated and with corrective actions implemented. HRP instills the initiative-taking approach to our clients with JHA’s.

Week 4 Slips trips and falls

Emphasize the hidden nature of this danger which makes it so prevalent

Tom: The number two cause on unintentional, injury related death are slips, trips, and falls. It is so dangerous because it is such an easy hazard to overlook and forget about and because it is such a common hazard to overlook. Can you give us an example of that?

Tad: The best example one can go to is the OSHA Top 10 list---Number 1 again is fall protection written plan and prevention and Number 6 is employee training associated with that said program. Number 3 is ladders, and Number 4 is scaffolding. Just think about ladders. There is a wide variety of ladders, and each kind (i.e., wood, steel, extension, fixed, caged, roof access) has a separate way to use it safely. With a heavy focus on construction and expansion, emphasis on quick and cost-effective builds leads to breakneck paces with overworked labor forces, sometimes with high turnover, language barriers, short term employees, and short-term projects where adequate safety planning and training, and more importantly oversight and protection is not maintained at a consistent level.

HRP dives into the OSHA regulations with our audits and safety services. We dive in with a hands-on approach, not just reading plans and programs but offering corrective measures, if applicable in real time on site. Think about it, if there is a deficiency on a site, there is an increased potential for an injury, so time is of the essence. All findings are provided adequate follow up reporting and documentation, but we are also there in person to make sure your employees are safe, and behavior modification can be initiated as soon as possible.

As safety professional we talk about these things discreetly in the week-by-week framing, but it is the comprehensive approach that makes the difference. Each one is an essential part of a bigger safety picture. That is why we bring them all together in the National Safety Month.

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Tad A. Goetcheus, PE, COO/President at HRP Associates, Inc.