Nothing is more central to a company’s operations than the safety of its employees, especially in high-risk industries. Placing employee safety at the center of a company’s operations not only saves lives and prevents injuries, but also enables the entire workforce, from the CEO to the manufacturing floor, to achieve operational excellence. You will be more committed to achieving your goals. In this article, the authors highlight unique strategic partnerships that have helped the power transmission and distribution construction industry curb injuries and fatalities caused by workplace hazard exposure. This guide identifies numerous best practices that any industry or business can apply to reduce injury rates and improve worker safety so that employees and companies can thrive.
For some employers, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is best known for its unannounced inspections to ensure that businesses are complying with the agency’s standards and impose fines if they don’t. But for the companies that build and maintain America’s power grid, the nation’s electric transmission and distribution infrastructure, OSHA is a partner in a joint venture that has prevented hundreds of serious injuries and saved dozens of lives.
Workers who construct or repair live power lines often face hazards at height or even while working. hanging from a helicopter, it’s huge. After hurricanes and other disasters, many people work long hours far from home, increasing the risk of injury. For example, after Hurricane Ian in September 2022; More than 44,000 workers from at least 33 states participated It temporarily relocated to Florida to restore power to more than 3 million people whose homes were darkened.
Twenty years ago, the power transmission, distribution and construction industry struggled to control injuries and fatalities caused by workplace hazard exposure. As a result, OSHA had square eyes on the industry regarding enforcement. In 2002, a company even faced criminal charges for willful violation of OSHA standards following the deaths of two of his line workers. But the problem was even bigger for the industry as a whole. In 2003 alone, 15 out of about 22,000 workers in the electrical construction industry died and nearly 6 out of 100 were injured on the job, according to an internal OSHA report.
Recognizing the need for fundamental change, the CEO of one of our contractors, MYR Group, Inc., worked with labor attorney Dennis J. Morikawa to reach out to other CEOs in the industry. I suggested that we work together to make improvements. Safety performance for all companies. They also asked OSHA to join the effort. OSHA may be known for its inspections; Apply different tools and approaches In a variety of situations, based on the employer’s commitment and willingness to address safety concerns. Prevention is always OSHA’s top priority. OSHA’s goal is to persuade employers to reduce hazards before inspections and certainly before workers are injured.
The CEOs also called on the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), a labor union representing workers at some participating companies, to join the effort. This was central to showing workers that employers were serious about keeping them safe. And the CEOs are working with two organizations: the National Electrical Contractors Association, which represents contractors large and small, and the Edison Electric Association, which represents electric utilities that own the electrical grid and contract with construction companies to build and maintain the grid. Involved major industry groups.
they together Strategic Partnerships for Electricity Transmission and Distribution (ET&D) The partners agreed to focus solely on safety and pledged not to use the forum to address other concerns, such as competitive disputes or labor management issues. This also dispelled concerns that the move would be considered a violation of antitrust laws.
The partnership initially focused on data analysis, best practices, and training. Their experts analyze all injuries that have occurred over the past five years and identify contributing factors that can be corrected or eliminated through best practices, such as new requirements for pre-employment briefings and the requirement to use insulated gloves and sleeves. Did. training program was developed to support these best practices. Company-specific injury data is collected, anonymized, and analyzed to enable continuous improvement and benchmarking. Representatives from each partner frequently met in teams to analyze incidents and near misses and determine how to effectively prevent them from happening again.
of ET&D’s strategic partnership grows From the original five partners 12 19 years since its establishment.identified a large number best practice Developed and delivered training programs to thousands of workers and supervisors. OSHA estimates that the industry’s average fatality rate decreased from more than 40 deaths per 100,000 employees per year before the partnership to less than 4 per 100,000 employees per year from 2018 to 2022. Serious injury rates have also fallen, remaining at a fraction of what they were before. The program has started.
How senior leaders can be more proactive about workplace safety issues
The success of this strategic partnership shows that a focus on employee safety can help companies achieve operational excellence. Business owners who share this goal can make great strides by personally accepting and communicating the importance of safety. One very powerful way to send a safety message is to make safety a key factor in hiring, promotions, and bonuses. In doing so, managers must be careful not to implement systems that underreport injuries and hazards to make safety performance look better than it actually is.
All injuries, and close calls where workers narrowly avoided serious injury, should be viewed as a tool to understand why injuries occur and be used to develop work requirements and training programs. Workers should be encouraged to identify hazards before they cause injury. Recognizing significant hazards and promptly mitigating them demonstrates a company’s commitment to safety and its leadership.
These approaches can be applied by any executive at a company with high-risk labor practices. However, ET&D’s strategic partnership allows leaders of normally competing companies to take an initially potentially uncomfortable first step toward collaborating on safety, and that such collaboration can then extend across the industry. It also shows that there is much to be gained by realizing that you can improve. Since the beginning of the partnership, the CEOs of several of the largest construction companies in the power transmission and distribution industry have met regularly in person to consider what is needed to ensure the safety of their employees. This sends a strong message to everyone in the company that safety is not just a priority (which can change from year to year), but a core principle across the company.
This type of collaboration has many more benefits. As more companies contribute data to analytics efforts, statistics become more robust and allow companies to benchmark their performance against their competitors. More incident research will help develop best practices and improve the design of training programs and safety messages.
I’ve seen companies fall from leaders in workplace safety to laggards. This is especially true when there is financial pressure to reduce costs, or when a CEO steps down and his successor has new priorities. The collaborative, cross-industry nature of these partnerships allows each CEO to stay engaged and committed even as leadership within the organization changes.
Companies whose line workers are repairing power grids know there will be more challenges in the coming years. Electric wires that are poorly maintained are caused a large-scale wildfirepower outages after hurricanes and tornadoes, increases in size and frequency. Changes in safety practices driven by ET&D’s strategic partnership will undoubtedly prevent further on-the-job deaths and serious injuries, and reduce the likelihood that new natural disasters will result in further personal tragedies for industry workers. .
The lesson of the ET&D partnership for other high-risk industries is that worker safety should be viewed as an investment, not a cost. Placing employee safety at the center of business operations not only saves lives and prevents injuries, but also enables the entire workforce, from the CEO to the shop floor, to achieve operational excellence. This will strengthen your commitment to
