BUILDING A CULTURE OF SAFETY - MARITIME DOOR & WINDOW

 

 

Maritime Door & Window had a safety problem. They were following safety rules and regulations but their culture was focused on compliance, not on being proactive about safety.

Their recent loss history was outside industry norms and they weren’t happy with the resulting higher premiums and the working environment.

“We knew we needed to do something. But how do we tackle it? We contacted WorkSafeNB,” said Mike Mann, CEO and owner of Maritime Door & Window.

Together, our prevention team worked with Maritime Door & Window with the goal of making safety part of their organization’s DNA. The undertaking focused on three areas: safety infrastructure, musculoskeletal injury (MSI) prevention and safety leadership.

• We performed a gap analysis of their safety program and an analysis of their injury details to develop and implement an action plan to proactively address safety exposures. The plan was supported by pre- and post-intervention surveys to track success.
• A WorkSafeNB ergonomic consultant met with the Maritime Door & Window team and provided education on various preventive measures to avoid repetitive strain and other musculoskeletal injuries.
• Maritime Door & Window was one of seven New Brunswick employers to participate in our SafeAlign Leadership Development project, a pilot presented in partnership with DEKRA Insights, focused on developing safety leadership to create a safety culture across the province − one employer, one CEO at a time.

Some of Mike’s take-aways as a leader were to increase safety interactions with team members, to recognize positive safety behaviours, to encourage his team to report near misses, and to identify hazards. He also hosts occasional employee appreciation weeks.

“We’re ecstatic with the results. It changed the conversation around safety, it changed the communication, and we got to the aspirational goal of making safety part of the company’s DNA,” Mann said. “I knew safety had really become part of our culture when I overheard a new hire and a trainer preparing a window to be shipped. The new hire asked, ‘Why are we spending so much time on how we move a window?’ The response from the trainer, ‘Safety is just the way we do things around here.’ ”

Underlining all these initiatives and progress was the valuable role of communications. The strategies learned and implemented led to better communications with a number of different staff groups in the building.

“We have a thriving safety culture with two-way communications and we keep doing a better job at it. It’s paid a lot of dividends, not just on safety,” he said.

Stories like this one are why we love doing what we do. Maritime Door & Window and other employers we have worked with in the last year know that investing in safety leadership provides good business results and helps employees feel valued and actively engaged in supporting a safety culture. Everyone has a role to play in keeping people healthy and safe at work.