CLAREMORE, Okla. — A solid safety program is made up of two parts — one being compliance of a technical/mechanical nature, and another being training of your laundry employees. Each of these areas requires a considerable paper trail to be left as well, so a solid system to track that is needed.
When I was a plant manager years ago, I was responsible for the safety program at my location, and compliance with the equipment, plant, building and grounds was the “easy” part for me. That was my wheelhouse and was compiled of things that can generally be visually “seen,” such as:
- Water puddles on the floor.
- Electrical panels left open (whether labeled or unlabeled).
- Sign-offs of inspections for the daily boiler tests, monthly fire extinguisher checks, etc.
- LOTO (lockout/tagout) stations properly stocked with locks and tags.
- Accessible emergency exits assuring there is a clear path to, through and away from the exit point.
- And the list goes on and on.
Education and training of the employees may be the biggest challenge. Many of the topics, terms and concepts do not come naturally to everyone. It is vitally important that the employees and methods chosen to teach your teams can properly and thoroughly communicate the concepts.
While there are enough topics to cover at least one per month throughout the year, I discovered that particular attention needs to be given to a few of the more critical topics that seem to be on OSHA’s radar more than others. These all get interweaved with OSHA’s Fatal Four: Falls, Caught In or Between, Struck-by, and Electrocution.
LOTO: Your team must be able to verbally differentiate between “affected” and “authorized” employee types and know to which category they belong.
Those in the “affected” employee category must be acutely aware of what they can and cannot do in the course of their work. They should be taught, through real-life examples, how to recognize the level of a situation and know what to do.
Likewise, “authorized” employees must be thoroughly trained, including completion of their annual periodic inspections, use of assigned locks and tags, live electric procedures, shift-change processes and paperwork (paper or electronic via tablet) to properly document their work.
Knowing the seven steps to a proper lockout and the corresponding steps to restore service is critical and must be committed to memory — and they should be able to verbalize it. Testing your “authorized” employees’ knowledge on this routinely through an observation or certification program will help assure you the training is sticking where it should.
Confined Spaces: While most of our plant employees are not exposed to confined spaces, it is important that they know what they are, where they are and how to avoid a catastrophe. This is much more important for our maintenance and back-of-the-house teams, but it goes for everyone, even your office team.
Knowing that a space has limited means of entry and exit, is not meant for regular work tasks, and has the possibility of developing a hazardous environmental or atmospheric condition is off-limits is important. Knowing what these areas are in our plants should be common knowledge for all employees — and they should be tagged and marked so there is no question about it.
Training all your employees in confined space recognition and avoidance, and training those tasked with entry in the proper safe methods of entry, is critical. It is an easy OSHA target if you have not tied up this topic thoroughly. Oh, and don’t forget the paperwork.
Slips/Trips/Falls and Walking/Working Surfaces: OSHA loves to come into a laundry and see puddles of water everywhere. The wrong inspector on the wrong day will see an opportunity to increase violation counts and fines. True, dealing with a lot of water in our business is a necessity, but controlling leaks, spills, and keeping floors clean and dry will limit your exposure.
Training your teams in the importance of this and ensuring all know it is their responsibility to help in their areas will go a long way to success.
I had a plant get fined once for a small spill on the floor, maybe only a quart or two of water. Appealing this violation incurred more cost than the fine. But if we had accepted it, we would have opened the opportunity for a more costly repeat violation later, either at that plant or at one of our other plants.
Fortunately, we were able to win this appeal, but we sure doubled down on managing our walking and working surface conditions.
The Bottom Line: There are a lot more than these topics in the world of safety, but knowing the basics and implementing a solid training program, including the proper tracking of the training, is critical to your business when OSHA comes knocking.
Having a program that differentiates employee levels or groups through more in-depth training will also show a great faith effort in working toward a successful safety journey.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].
