Plants and the companies that serve them work in conditions that keep changing: feedstock and equipment disturbances, regulatory and environmental changes, and market volatility caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. That makes it more important than ever for companies to keep reviewing and improving their safety programs. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has said that "Employers often find that process and other changes made to improve workplace safety and health may result in significant improvements to their organization's productivity and profitability."
Safety programs are no longer a check-the-box exercise. They depend on an organizational culture in which every employee is aware of safety and committed to it. That commitment needs visible engagement from leadership, and a set of expectations that teams and departments carry into their own work.
EHS Today makes the same point. Sustainable safety performance takes more than adherence to a checklist. It takes a company-wide culture that everyone shares, from floor managers and shift employees to outside contractors, with leadership visibly involved and expectations that people understand and practice.
The Imubit Safety Committee
Safety has always been a priority at Imubit, for our employees, our clients and contractors, and in our work with the plants we serve. To move our commitment from a program to part of the culture, we set up the Imubit Safety Committee. It brings employees together to achieve and maintain a safe workplace under the company's guiding principle, "build safety, operate safety."
The committee draws its members from account management, product management, implementation engineering, integration engineering, economic engineering, marketing and sales. It develops, reviews and implements processes that cover employee engagement, safety integration with clients, maintaining industry safety ratings, safety protocols, annual employee training, and communications during incidents and inclement weather.
The committee has five objectives:
- Engage employees in achieving a safe workplace.
- Review all safety-related incidents and accidents promptly.
- Conduct periodic workplace inspections and management of change (MOC) reviews, identify hazards, and recommend ways to eliminate or control them, with the inspection process itself audited periodically.
- Evaluate and audit workplace safety and health processes continuously, and recommend to management how to improve them.
- Make sure MOC reviews and audits are conducted in line with the governing procedure.
Safety Moments
Alongside those objectives, a central part of changing our safety culture was making safety part of everyday conversation. Teams across the company now open meetings with a brief Safety Moment on a safety topic in or out of the office. Topics we have covered include:
- Winterization
- Proper lifting techniques
- Preventing eye strain
- Mental and emotional health
- Landscaping and gardening safety
- Manufacturing cybersecurity
- Proper hydration and heat-related illness
- Ladder safety
- Hurricane preparedness
- Hand protection and line of fire
- Cycling safety
The Safety Committee meets each month to discuss and improve the company's safety culture, and the conversations we have with co-workers, clients and partners keep developing. Safety is more than a handbook or a rating. Lasting change comes from bringing accountability and engagement into each employee's daily work, and from continuing to improve the quality of life of our teams and the colleagues we work with.
