Welcome to Safety Watch, a newsletter that provides an update on current loss-control regulatory and technical issues.

CONTENTS

How to assess employee health hazards in the workplace
(cover page)

Evaluating dust levels in the workplace

Employee accidents are a sign of faulty work processes

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Employee accidents are a sign of faulty work processes

Managers should go to the scene of each employee accident to investigate, gather relevant facts and question those involved.

Nearly every time an employee is involved in an accident, a process failure has also occurred. Managers may attempt to excuse accidents as chance occurrences and as a cost of doing business, but in their haste to return to production, they can cause future problems by dooming themselves to repeat history.

To avoid these pitfalls, managers can learn a few basic skills from experienced investigators who gather relevant facts, conduct a root-cause analysis, discover what failures occurred and prevent recurrence.

Root-cause analysis

Root-cause analysis is focused on learning from the effects or consequences associated with an event. These consequences can be acceptable; however, most are unexpected and detrimental to business. These adverse consequences could include damage to property, disruption of business, employee disability or death, increased dollar losses, loss of reputation and loss of public confidence.
The upside of performing a root-cause analysis after an accident is that a company can learn from past mistakes and avoid future problems.

Gather relevant facts

Investigators must learn to look for and gather relevant facts associated with the cause of the accident. Many times, investigators jump to the easy answer without looking further and fail to gather important information. Making snap decisions may quickly solve a problem, but without careful thought, it also may return an unexpected outcome.

Example: An employee reports to his shift manager that he slipped and fell in hydraulic fluid spilled on the warehouse floor. The manager calls the maintenance crew and asks the supervisor to have the spill cleaned. The cleaning crew cleans the floor and ensures the fluid does not leave a slippery residue. The following day, the manager finds a similar spill in the same area of the warehouse and then calls the maintenance supervisor and proceeds to become agitated about the cleaning crew’s ability to keep the warehouse clean.

Result: The manager failed to determine the root cause of the spill. She assumed that, by calling the maintenance department and having the spill cleaned, her job was done. Cleaning the spill alone, while a good first step toward preventing another accident, will not prevent it from recurring.

The manager should have considered asking a few more questions to determine what caused the spill. What type of fluid was spilled? What type of equipment is being used in the area? Who is operating this type of equipment?

Is there a process in place to train associates to recognize spills leaking from equipment and how to have the industrial maintenance shop repair the leaking equipment?

Did the manager cause another employee problem by her reaction to the incident?

Ask open-ended questions

An investigation is like opening a series of doors one after another, with each leading to another set of facts. Use open-ended questions to encourage dialog about the facts.

To ensure you are asking open-ended questions, begin each sentence with “who,” “what,” “where,” “when,” “how” or “why.” It is difficult to change the close-ended question habit. When we ask open-ended questions, responses are more expressive, rather than simple “yes” or “no” answers.

Face it, people don’t like being questioned about potential failures and may be quick to guard their answers.

Look at these two question examples:

1. Did you see if the injured party failed to stop at the intersection?

2. Tell me about what you saw relating to the accident at the intersection.

The material covered is identical, but the likely answers are very different. No. 1 is a close-ended question. The expected reply is “yes” or “no.” If an investigator asks that question and gets one of those answers, then the ball is back in the investigator’s court to encourage a more detailed response. A witness may say more, but often chooses not to.

Question 2 already encourages the potential witness to explore the issue by disarming his fears that there will be blame associated with his response. An investigator gets more information this way, and the investigation seems less like an interrogation. 

There is another important difference between these two sentences. No. 1 is a leading question. It suggests, at least mildly, that the injured party is at fault.

In this exchange, there are three important keys to remember:

1. Let the witness give her answer. The investigator must sit back and just listen to the response without leading, prompting or interrupting.

2. Ask questions that will help identify process failures. Processes are only as good as they are known and understood by employees and managers. Practices that are written and never followed really don’t exist.

3. Focus on unsafe behaviors. The majority of accidents results from the injured person performing an unsafe act, whether it is a shortcut or an unknown procedure. Regardless, the open-ended question should focus on determining what occurred rather than seeking blame.

Develop effective remedies

Many investigations fail to involve key managers in the process. The purpose of involving management is to develop measurable action steps that critically assess the effectiveness of existing processes. Before holding employees accountable for safe behavior, managers must first understand and initiate dialogue when unsafe practices are present. The other reason for involving managers in the process is that they will be a true test of whether the remedy is reasonable and the desired outcome will solve the problem.