The 30-Inch View

Two More Ways to Become Recession-Proof

Alex Pollack recommended three actions that EHS Managers should take in his blog entitled "Becoming Recession Proof". He provides good guidance for EHS professionals and managers on survival in their current position during the recession. Not only do I agree with Alex, here are two more actions you can take:

• Use the language of business leaders
• Demonstrate your value  

Use the Language of Business Leaders

If you want to be heard and understood, communicate using the language, terms, and measures of your organization's leaders. If they are discussing cycle time reduction, reduction of waste, employee retention, ROI, and/or time to market, then align your programs and messages with these issues. Top leaders in companies care about, but don't really understand things like injury/illness rate, cost of non-compliance, names of regulations, or TLVs. However, astute EHS professionals know that when these technical issues and details can be presented in terms top management can understand, they are effective, understood, and essential. Listen to the topics and terms discussed at management meetings, read and think about the company metrics and initiatives, then align your technical program to support them using the common language. 

Ergonomic improvements reduce waste, improve cycle time, increase employee satisfaction, and oh... they also decreases the chance of injuries. Learn to speak like a business leader, not as a technical expert. This is easier than educating a plant manager on the details and requirements of a technical EHS issue.

Demonstrate Value

Gone are the days when EHS professionals were measured on compliance and injury/illness rate. As EHS programs have evolved, matured, and reduced losses in the workplace, we must demonstrate the value of our presence and contribution to the bottom-line of the organization. Value, in business, is typically measured in money. Specifically, if the results of your EHS program lead to savings or a monetary contribution greater than the cost of the program, you've added value. Return on Investment, or ROI, is business speak for calculating the value ($) of your program. This could be the value of the overall EHS program, the IH sampling program, ergonomic improvements, or emergency prevention and preparedness. Injury/illness rates are a poor reflection of value and savings. Cycle time savings, reduction in errors and scrap, reduction in new project lead time, and employee retention can all be translated into monetary values to demonstrate ROI. The trick is demonstrating the cause and effect of EHS contributions and calculating a realistic return.

When you can demonstrate how, and how much, your EHS contribution has enhanced the bottom line of an organization, then you are demonstrating value, leading to a higher level of respect and recognition throughout the organization.

EU Recognizes Importance of Ergonomics and Safety

Recently I was on the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work website and there was a post titled European Week aims at cutting workplace accidents and diseases, and it made me think of the differences between the approach of the EU to ergonomics and safety versus the US approach. What drew me to this article was the statement from the Director of EU-OSHA:

"Every three-and-a-half minutes somebody in the EU dies from work-related causes and every four-and-a-half seconds an EU worker is involved in an accident that forces them to stay at home for at least three working days. This is unacceptable! We need a change, and this change starts with assessing workplace risks. We have to make employers, workers, safety representatives and policy makers aware that proper risk assessment is the key to good workplace safety and health management."

Last year, I spent 20 weeks in Europe rolling out a corporate ergonomics process and it allowed me to see first hand cultural differences between sites. The attitude of a lot of the companies I've worked with in Europe is "let's plan early and do it right the first time". If they say that Ergonomics and Safety are their number one priority, it is. In the US, I see a lot of advertisements at facilities boasting the importance of safety and ergonomics and how it is the number one priority, but in practice, it is only number one until something more important comes along. In the blog post Leverage Internal Resources for Safety & Ergonomics Communication, Cindy touches on advertising within a facility. This is very important, but national advertising can also be very effective and gives support to companies. Such was the goal with European Week for Safety and Health at Work.

We recently posted A Prescription for Carpal Tunnel Vision: Thoughts on an Ergonomic Standard which was a response to the recent news of an ergonomics regulation potentially coming into effect with the change in the US Presidency. Although labor unions tend to support ergonomics regulations to reduce workplace injuries, businesses in the US often feel that supporting ergonomics will be too costly. They do not want to invest the time or energy into something that may not show an immediate return on investment. They do not understand the long term value of ergonomics. This is in part due to the approach that companies take with their ergonomics process. As many companies do with their Lean Manufacturing initiatives, ergonomic principles are applied in a non-systemic way. By not seeing the whole picture and understanding all of the aspects that need to be considered, they end up unsuccessful. Successful companies understand that if you invest resources, time, and money early, it will save much more in the long run in terms of injuries, rework, and productivity. Being proactive and systematic in your approach is the key.

The European Union recognizes that being proactive means looking at risk and not injuries. Risk reduction starts with assessments. In order to fix a problem or reduce risk, you first need to understand it. Only after you have identified risk can you move towards implementing countermeasures to reduce that risk. All of this data needs to be tracked so that you can ensure that your countermeasures are making a significant difference. When done well, this is a process that will yield a startling ROI in both the short-term and long-term.

 

Welcome back...time for results

It's the Tuesday after Labor Day, traditionally marking the end of the summer in the US. Kids are heading back to school and for many of us, its time to get back to business. With Q4 right around the corner, its also time to start thinking about results; where will we end up in 2008, and how do we improve in 2009. With this thought in mind, I'd like to share a recent story from our e-newsletter:

BEMIS Uses RAPID ™ Team Events to Reduce Injuries

Established in 1858 and headquartered in Neenah, Wisconsin, Bemis Company, Inc. is a global supplier of flexible packaging and presssure sensitive label materials. Twelve companies operate 56 locations in 10 countries under the Bemis banner with combined net sales over $3.6 billion. Nearly two-thirds of Bemis' packaging is used in the food industry, with the balance used in markets including medical, pharmaceutical, chemical and agribusiness.

The company began a pilot ergonomics initiative in its Paper Packaging Division in 2006, extending the program to include all U.S. operations later in the year. According to Safety Director, Paul Kubicek, "the majority of our injuries are due to strains and sprains, and strengthening our ergonomics programs goes right to the heart of making work and life better for our employees."

Bemis has taken a two-pronged approach with its ergonomics initiative, including training for engineers and ergonomics team members and RAPID (Risk and Performance Improvement Deployment) Team Events for employees. "I'd have to say that although both components have been effective, the immediate results from the RAPID Team Events have made the biggest impact at Bemis," says Kubicek. He notes multiple reasons for this. "RAPID Team Events empower employees to be part of a positive change on the shop floor, and the improvements these events generate are immediate and highly visible. These types of continuous improvement evnets are the catalysts that shape and energize our ergonomics teams toward an ongoing ergoomic risk reduction process."

Ergonomic improvement efforts are an important part of a multi-faceted safety improvement program underway at Bemis. The progress the company has made is evident in its total recordable injury rate (TRIR). In the Paper Packaging Division, TRIR improved by 14% from 2005 to 2006 and by an additional 50% from 2006 to 2007. Improvements continue in 2008. Throughout the company's U.S. operations, total TRIR has improved by 45% from 2005 to 2008 (YTD through June).

The Bemis ergonomics initiative has gone global in 2008, with its South American operations getting involved in May. The company also has plans to merge ergonomic training into its global 5S team training. When asked for his key advice, Kubicek says, "ergonomics is something that everyone can relate to, so involve everyone! An improvement initiative that all employees can grasp and see the benefits of generates its own support."

OSHA's General Duty Clause...

Lynn Bergeson's post, "Workplace Safety is a Shared Responsibility" provides perspective on some of the challenges posed by relying on OSH Act's General Duty Clause as a non-specific catch all.

The OSH Act has triggered many positive accomplishments. Still, after 35 years, much is left undone. More than 15 workers are killed every day on the job in this country and a worker becomes ill or injured on the job every 2.5 seconds.

It's not well publicized that we have more fish and wildlife inspectors than OSHA inspectors, or that the penalties from a chemical release that kills fish is higher than a chemical release that kills a worker. Almost no one understands that OSHA inspections are infrequent and penalties for endangering workers are so insignificant that there is almost no disincentive for employers to break the law.

The overwhelming majority of deaths, injuries, and illnesses could have been prevented had the employers simply provided the safe workplace required and complied with well-recognized OSHA regulations or other safe practices.

Obviously the General Duty Clause is not the key. While lofty in principle, the General Duty Clause (as Lynn Bergeson points out) is seriously deficient in practice. Vague definitions and arguable phrasing like "serious physical harm" combine to assure that a serious violation, while clear on its merits, will have a tough time in court.

For a general duty clause to be effective, it should be straightforward, clear and consise -- you meet it or you don't. Here's an example:

It is the general duty of every employer to ensure that every workplace has a comprehensive safety and management program which is effective in finding and fixing recognized hazards and in reducing workplace injuries and illnesses.

Could your organization meet this requirement?

Perspective and Priority: Wellness vs. Health & Safety

In a post titled "The 8 Top Corporate Wellness Programs", Konstantin Koss comments that "Health Risk Assessment (HRA)"...is used to " determine the safety and health concerns of workers by assessing the appropriateness of the facilities and equipment against the needs of the employees."

In our experience, this statement blurs the facts and may overstate the goal of an HRA. What Mr. Koss describes is an assessment conducted as part of an occupational safety and health program. Typically, this is managed by a safety and health professional and the goal is to control exposures to safety and health risks inherent to the workplace. These professionals have the responsibility to evaluate the level of exposure workers have to certain hazardous or dangerous materials and practices, NOT the employee through an HRA. Workplace exposures could include slips, trips, or falls, exposure to chemicals, electric sources, non-iodizing radiation, and noise, or exposure to poor ergonomic conditions that can result in injury.

An HRA, as we've seen it used, is a tool within the Wellness Programs offered to employees. Typically it involves a questionnaire or survey of an individual's personal health habits. It's purpose is to identify personal exposures and conditions of an individual to establish a baseline of their health/wellness. This can include blood pressure, cholesterol levels, heart rate, body fat index, family health history, and personal health habits (diet, smoking, exercise). From this information, a Health Wellness Coach works with the individual to identify which, if any, identified health risks are important, and to guide the individual to personal changes which control the risks.

It concerns me when personal health/wellness and workplace safety are lumped together as the same issue. Wellness is a personal choice, and is completely controlled by, the employee. Workplace Safety is a business choice employers make, and control, to protect employees and meet regulatory requirements.

There is no denying that companies can benefit from improving the overall wellness of their employees and in fact, it's just a good thing to do (important in today's environment of high corporate social responsibility expectations). Workplace safety on the other hand is an imperative. Healthy or not, workers in an unsafe environment will get hurt and/or sick. If you want healthy employees, and a more tangible ROI, fix the workplace first.

photo credit:Redver

Does your EHS leadership have a face?

Posting a company's Safety Policy, Commitment to "Green" business practices, or a Corporate Responsibility report on a corporate web site is becoming a common practice, especially with Fortune 1000 companies and other global organizations. These public declarations to employee safety, public health, and environmental stewardship are typically just a mouse click away from the list of a company's senior leadership and board of directors. How often do these lists include the senior executive(s) with ultimate responsibility and accountability for EHS performance?

Does your EHS leadership have a face?

If your top health and safety leader is not a corporate officer, is EHS really that important to the success of your organization?

An ongoing struggle for all EHS programs is engaging employees and middle management (and keeping them engaged) in following safe work practices and standards. True leaders provide examples that influence the actions of others (hence the term leader). Visible, focused and consistent EHS Executive Leaders demonstrate care of employees, value to EHS stewardship, and commitment to policies and statements in their actions.

The statement "lead by example" may seem overused but it remains applicable. If your organization makes public your EHS policies and positions through web sites, certifications (ISO 14001 & OHSAS 18001) and statements to employees, then follow-through and visible action is essential to demonstrate commitment. Too many times, we meet employees, supervisors and managers who assume the EHS manager or staff are fully responsible for controlling the hazards, aspects and impacts of the company's operations. Too many well-meaning and committed organizations proudly show and communicate the face of Quality, Human Resources, R&D, IT, and Finance and miss the chance to demonstrate a personal commitment to EHS.

If safety and health is an essential component of running your business (and what business can run without a workforce that is healthy?) doesn't it deserve a visible leader?

Does your EHS leadership have a face? 

30,000 foot success, 30-inch failure

It’s difficult to say which is the sadder situation; a county (community) hospital having excess operations (taxpayer) money in hand or the quality issues described in the Star –Telegram articles that Mark Graban from Leanblog discussed the other day.

That the Tarrant County Hospital Commission can permit either situation is galling. County Hospitals such as John Peter Smith are responsible for delivering quality care for those most challenged by caring for themselves, the local Medicaid and Medicare populations.

JPS is part of the Federal network agency Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. CMS has a fully staffed and funded Office of Clinical Standards & Quality (OCSQ) that “Provides leadership and coordination for the development and implementation of a cohesive, agency-wide approach to measuring and promoting quality and leads the Agency's priority-setting process for clinical quality improvement”.

CMS is a key member of The Hospital Quality Alliance, a public-private collaboration “to improve the quality of care provided by the nation's hospitals by measuring and publicly reporting on that care”.

The goal of the program is “to identify a robust set of standardized and easy-to-understand hospital quality measures that would be used by all stakeholders in the healthcare system in order to improve quality of care and the ability of consumers to make informed healthcare choices”.

And if we’re to follow recent survey results, as of January 2008, JPS is performing well. Let’s look at one measure - the indicators for surgical infection and complication prevention that reports on the hospital's overall performance for improving patient safety by reducing post-surgery complications.

JPS, in spite of the newspaper’s findings, outperformed the national average in six out of six categories.

Core Measures	JPS Health Network January ‘08 Preliminary Results	National Average*
Prophylactic antibiotic received 1 hour prior to incision	89.8%	82%
Prophylactic antibiotic selection	97.9%	90%
Antibiotic discontinued within 24 hour post surgery end	91.7%	78%
Surgery patients with VTE prophylaxis ordered	92.2%	79%
Patients received appropriate VTE prophylaxis within 24 hours prior to surgery to 24 hours after surgery	84.3%	75%
Patients on beta blockers PTA who received beta blockers perioperatively	86.7%	83%

^*Source: Hospital Quality

Alliance

The national situation for Medicaid and Medicare patients must be a tragedy on a very large scale if, in the eyes of some, JPS is a profitable, above average quality performer.

Just shows that elaborate oversight, frequent benchmarking quality surveys and all the mission and value statements can not substitute for the one key ingredient of knowing what the client (patient AND staff) wants (needs) and committing to its delivery. Execution means succeeding at the 30-Inch level!

Efficient+Effective+Effort=Success

  A post at Slow Leadership caught my attention the other day:

“Why you should think seriously about being less efficient.”  Hmmm.

Though it may seem contradictory to what we know and understand in the world of lean and ergonomics, it makes total sense.  Being efficient is all about minimizing waste, increasing productivity, and decreasing costs (think: “How can I do this with less?”).  Being effective, however, is about finding the right solution and thinking outside of the box (think: “How can we do this better?”)  Now it should go without saying that you need both to be successful; but it’s about how you utilize your resources that counts.

As usual,the 80/20 rule can be applied to various functions within a company:

• Hourly employees, line managers/supervisors, line engineers, etc.:
  • 80% of the time this group should be encouraged to look for continuous improvement and efficiency gains; this can be done through team-based kaizen events.
  • 20% of the time this group should be encouraged to seek out new methods, tools, and processes; this can be done through involving them in clean-sheet design reviews.
• Plant management, leadership team, company executives, etc.:
  • 80% of the time this group should be looking for ways to innovate and to be more effective at what they do; this can be done through benchmarking with similar/different industries, market research, etc.
  • 20% of the time this group should be involved in continuous improvement initiatives; this is to ensure there remains a connection to what is currently being done.

Slow Leadership included a statement made by Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon.com, on his thoughts about customer needs.  I thought I’d include a couple of other examples of Bezos’ colleagues (who, by the way, also made it onto this year’s Time 100 list who are models of how to be more effective, not just efficient:

• Indra Nooyi, Chariman and CEO of PepsiCo
  • Rather than just focus on how to be more effective in their traditional market (soft drinks and snack chips), Nooyi pushed for PepsiCo to become a “healthier brand”; purchase Quaker Oats and Tropicana in recent years and removing trans fat from its products well before other competitors.
  • PepsiCo’s international business grew 22% last year
• Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple
  • Rather than spending time, money, and resources making products people don’t want (think back to the days of the good ol’ walkman and discman), Jobs is king of marketability.  Knowing your customers’ wants and needs are far more important than building it fast or cheap.
  • Apple’s stock has increased over 70% of the past year.

If you’re still not convinced, let’s close with a quote from Thomas Leonard, founder of CoachVille: “When you're effective, you are able to accomplish the worthwhile goal you've chosen. When you're efficient, you quickly carry out actions. You won't be effective, however, unless those actions result in your achieving a meaningful goal.”

Are you efficient, effective or efficiently effective? It makes a difference.

Leadership is about people, not assets.

The writings of Sun Tzu, which are collectively called The Art of War, are over 2,500 years old, and yet they are as applicable today as they were when they were first written. Throughout Sun Tzu's writings are the themes of leadership, engagement, communication, planning and preparation, and discipline.

Sun Tzu claims that to succeed in war, one should have full knowledge of one's own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of the enemy. Lack of either might result in defeat. The Art of War was written in a universal style that draws parallels between the challenges in business and those of war, specifically:

§         How are you collecting data and does it originate from both internal and external sources?

§         Do you have the right data on your dashboard or are you still largely relying on business intuition?

§         Can you discern any patterns, gain insight, and extract meaning from the data?

§         How is your organization incentivized to positively respond to and learn from the resultant information?

Modern businesses have deployed automation and information technologies that have led to vast amounts of data becoming available.  The true art is sieving through large amounts of data, extracting useful information and turning that information into actionable knowledge with an appreciation and understanding of the resultant outcome.

 

Sound leadership advice on where to start the journey towards business wisdom comes from the first chapter of Art of War.  Sun Tzu says, "If people are treated with benevolence, faithfulness and justice, then they will be of one mind and will be glad to serve," which shows that workers simply want to be treated fairly and have the faith of their co-workers and supervisors. Sun Tzu tells us that we first must know ourselves and there is no better way for leaders to learn than by getting out of the office and seeing what is really happening in your environment.

Once out of your office, leadership can adopt a consistent and straightforward continuous improvement approach to discern the root cause of successes or problems. 

Consistently ask these simple questions:

§         What was our plan?

§         What actually happened and did we follow the plan?

§         What went right first and how do we sustain that part?

§         What went wrong and ask ourselves why (5-why’s) this occurred?

§         Finally, how do we fix the problem and who is going to be responsible for verifying that it is fixed?

This simple leadership act can be a key to success or failure of your continuous improvement efforts and also serve as positive reinforcing behavior for employees to remain engaged.  This is an important lesson as durable gains in productivity and quality accrue only when your workforce is engaged in a continuous improvement culture. The true goal here is not just to transform manufacturing, but rather to create "thinking people" who are glad to serve and sustain the process. 

Without engaged employees, continuous improvement initiatives die on the vine.  Companies experiencing positive bottom-line effects from their efforts in continuous improvement are doing so because they have learned and adopted the tactics that Sun Tzu described long ago about tapping into a self-reinforcing cycle of respectful employee engagement.

Chart: Ackoff, R.L., "From Data to Wisdom", Journal of Applied Systems Analysis, Volume 16, 1989 p 3-9 

Enterprise Transformation: Extending Lean beyond tools and events

Thanks to Ralph Bernstein at Lean Insider for his post detailing the improvement efforts going on at St. Joseph's Hospital in Parkersburg, West Virginia, owned by Signature Hospital Corporation.

Kudos to St. Joseph's for such an effective demonstration of the power of incremental improvement. Too often the "increments" are over looked or looked over in favor of the bigger bang - but it's the roll-up effect of the little things that is so powerful.

We know how good ergonomics engineering can provide dramatic improvements in takt time by attacking wasted motion even in baby steps. The real challenge, now that the demonstration is successful, is to take it system-wide; as we say - Fix Once, Repeat Many (FORM).

The reason it becomes the greater challenge is that Kaizen events on the factory or the patient floor and improvement projects conducted by experts are not enough. To sustain the gains, Signature must move the game from tools and projects to enterprise transformation. That will necessitate organizational leadership that supports and drives enterprise behaviors - and engages all staff in the cause.

We hope they are successful!