VPP Element 8: Employee Involvement

VPP Element 8: Employee involvement in the Safety Management program is critical to a strong safety culture which will help keep everyone safe. E Light has added many new ways to involve employees in the development of safety policy and procedures, the recognition of hazards, sharing of accidents, incidents and near misses and in recognizing good safety actions. These include the QR code on the ID badges for identifying the equipment that an employee has been certified to operate and their training records and for reporting hazards, observations and recognizing things that our work colleagues are doing that is safe. We also have the continuous improvement server for open discussion about safety, the things we are doing to make things safer and the mistakes that we have made so that we can all learn from them. We also expect everyone to participate in discussions about safety matters so that we can get a good sampling of ideas and comments which help us make decisions about policy and procedures. The safety committee is also working on recommending new policies or revising current policies and procedures based on your input. These are all great ways for you to make a difference, all we need is your participation.  

We also have another way of being involved that is very important and we should all give some thought and put some effort into making it happen on every shift and that is employee involvement in the JHA briefing.  It is easy for us to just wait for the supervisor to read the JHA that they have developed for the task and mark off our pretask cards but is that really being involved?  You are the person that is going to doing the task and the one that is going to be exposed to the hazard. Would it not be better if you spoke up and helped identify hazards that may be missed on the JHA or suggested ways to control hazards that have not been mentioned? Maybe point out things that are on the JHA that really are not a hazard or many other things that you have noticed but never said anything.

I challenge all of you to start participating in the JHA briefings, not just listening and marking the cards. Be active, speak up, get involved. It is your safety and the safety of those you work with that is at stake. Let's all get involved every way we can and make safety our core value and prevalent throughout our company each and every day.

Training Should not be limited to the Training Center. It should happen every day and be conducted by every one. That is the heart of continuous improvement.