EH&S Summit: Safety starts at the top

INDIANAPOLIS—When safety is the topic for the morning stand-up, typically an injury or near-miss has occurred.

And therein lies the problem, according to Trinnie Cortez, an executive operations specialist with Tucson, Ariz.-based Caterpillar Safety Services. Cortez kicked of the Environmental Health and Safety Summit with "Safety as the Conduit to Operational Excellence" in Indianapolis Aug. 7.

The two-day gathering is organized annually by the Association for Rubber Products Manufacturers and the Manufacturers Association for Plastics Processors.

"When we see these trends, these near misses ... we increase our activities and training," Cortez told about 60 attendees. "We do more audits and more compliance checks to make sure things are squared away.

"And we definitely discipline. We look at all kinds of things in policies and procedures. But does it get better? Sometimes it does. It is getting talked about, that's why."

But what happens when the safety talk stops?

"Wherever there are people, there is culture," Cortez said. "Culture can be intentional or unintentional. But we need to put this into the context of safety. Incidents happens because of adverse conditions. Can we always blame employee?

"No. It is the attitudes and beliefs that the culture has that influences their behaviors."

The reportable, recorded safety incidents at Caterpillar in 2003 represented about 6 percent of the work force, according to Cortez. For a company of about 100,000 employees, that translated to 6,000 employees.

And that number had to change.

"That is an immense amount of people," Cortez said. "And the cost was astronomical—not just the effects on the 6,000 lives ... but on the families and friends of the people who were injured."

So what was going on? Complacency, for one, as employees "went through the motions of the day," Cortez said.

"Even with repeat incidents, notifications were made, reports were sent up the chain ... and nothing changed," he said. "We needed a resilient safety culture."

And that means buying in from the top down, ensuring that safety is the first thing on employees' minds.

"It means learning from our mistakes ... getting everyone actively involved in safety and caring about it," Cortez said. "I've certainly made my share of mistakes. The key is, how do we develop an effective, efficient team."

"I did it by developing a culture to keep people physically and mentally safe."

Today, Caterpillar has become one of the safest companies in America, according to Cortez, reducing its recordable incident rate by 94 percent since 2003.

Developing a culture that "resists the challenges and priorities of shifting away from safety" assisted this significant change, Cortez said.

And leadership is key as well.

"We can't have a shared mindset without leadership," he said. "Up and down the chain of command, we need leadership that proactively and positively maintains safety."

And leadership should resist the urge to blame the individual.

"Many will look at a particular role or person—the supervisors who set priorities, and what the tasks will look like for day," Cortez said. "But supervisors have different goals that come from upper management. Production, quality ... those goals also influence what they talk about.

"This leaves the safety department to talk about safety all day long. Operations doesn't report to safety. Safety needs to start at the top and trickle all the way through."

It is no secret that safety and leadership go hand in hand, Cortez said.

"Leadership is not something people are born with," he said. "It is a set of behaviors that have to be learned and taught. We have to assess progress to see how it's going.

"And this needs to be integrated into all operations. If we do this, we can positively reinforce the things that we see. That, in turn, will lead to more safety behavior and predictable results.

"We have stand-ups in the morning ... and we talk about all kinds of other things throughout the day. But during the day, do we always check in on how safety is going? These unwritten rules and priorities throughout the day influence the culture."