Safety improvements and early return-to-work have carried many school districts insured by SFM to the head of the class.

Through years of consistent effort and working in partnership with SFM, school districts have seen their experience modification factors drop as much as 50 points over time.

In a big organization like a school district, getting everyone to support and cooperate with safety efforts is essential.

Turning around a trend of high losses can be challenging in school districts. But those who’ve done it have seen their efforts pay off in the form of lower workers’ compensation premiums, reduced need to hire substitutes and improved employee morale.

Return-to-work programs key to controlling costs

Implementing strong return-to-work programs has been a key factor in reducing losses for many school districts insured by SFM.

Having light-duty, transitional jobs identified in advance helped the South Washington County Schools get injured workers with medical restrictions back to work sooner, said Assistant Director of Human Resources Theresa Lenarz. The Cottage Grove, Minnesota-based district saw a 73-point e-mod drop over six years, reducing its workers’ compensation costs by tens of thousands of dollars.

Their go-to light-duty assignments include shredding paper, alphabetizing items in their student information center and helping out with special projects like laminating or cutting out paper items.

Injured workers tend to appreciate being able to return to work even when medical restrictions prevent them from doing their regular jobs, Lenarz said.

“By and large, they’re really excited because they want to transition back into work,” she said. “It gives them the opportunity to try something new while they’re recovering.”

Early return-to-work can have a significant impact on any organization’s e-mod. When injured employees return to work before the state’s waiting period ends, the claim is considered medical-only, and loss costs are discounted by 70 percent when calculating the e-mod.

Focus on major loss sources for safety improvements

School districts have also made great strides in safety by focusing on preventing the most common injuries.

In schools, which have big parking lots with multiple entrances, snow- and ice-related slips and falls are often a major risk.

The St. Louis County (Minnesota) Schools district, which saw a 45-point e-mod drop over six years, has worked to prevent winter slips and falls in many ways, said SFM Loss Prevention Specialist Joe Morin.

Examples of the district’s tactics include:

• Using proactive and responsive snow- and ice-control measures
• Educating staff on slip-and-fall prevention tactics during classroom safety education courses
• Posting SFM’s winter slip-and-fall prevention posters and other penguin campaign materials
• Providing custodians with traction footwear to prevent falls in slippery conditions
• Experimenting with liquid brine pretreatment

To help identify and address additional risk factors, SFM assists the district by conducting comprehensive site safety audits, workstation ergonomic evaluations and safety training. The district is very good about correcting any safety issues discovered, Morin said.

“They place a high value on safety and work together to make meaningful improvements,” Morin said. “Clearly, they’ve been very effective.”

Getting buy-in from employees helps make safety programs successful

In a big organization like a school district, getting everyone to support and cooperate with safety efforts is essential.

The Chisago Lakes School District, based in Lindstrom, Minnesota, would not have seen its e-mod drop 41 points over seven years if not for the support of the district’s superintendent, building principals, buildings and grounds directors and many more, said Director of Business Services Heide Miller.

“You’ve got to have support from the top down, and get everyone involved that you can,” Miller said. “It’s a district-wide effort. Everyone has a little part to play, and that really helps out.”

Roles might include giving safety talks in staff meetings, reporting or correcting unsafe conditions or simply wearing required personal protective equipment.

While e-mods don’t change overnight, they certainly can improve over time.

“The fact that organizations as complex as school districts can see reductions in their losses should be encouraging to all employers,” Morin said. “It shows that with persistent effort over time, it really is possible to see substantial and sustainable improvement.”

For health care workers, sometimes employee safety and patient safety seem to compete. But leaders at St. Luke’s Hospital in Duluth believe the two go hand-in-hand.

“Our organization here is really mission-driven and patient-focused,” said Director of Rehab Brett Osborne. “If our nurses are injured and can’t serve the patients, then we’ve got a problem.”

As a side benefit of this patient-first mentality and focus on employee safety, St. Luke’s has been able to keep workers’ compensation costs in check.

Their experience modification factor reached a peak in 2007 of 1.36, but has been steadily dropping since then and is now just 0.63. And though their payroll has increased nearly 180 percent since 2006, claim frequency has consistently decreased from 3.35 claims per million dollars of payroll in 2006 to 1.62 claims per million dollars of payroll in 2016.

Focusing on lifting injuries

One key contributor to this decrease has been improvements in safe patient handling.

In 2007, St. Luke’s began working with Barrier Free Access , a provider of safe patient handling products and design consultation, to bring in new lifting equipment and staff training in an effort to cut down on staff injuries.

The lifts they were previously using were getting old and in need of replacement. St. Luke’s was also seeing more employee injuries from manual patient movement, driving up workers’ compensation costs.

Battling tradition

Getting new equipment was only part of the solution; St. Luke’s also had to change its lifting culture.

Nurses typically were not trained in school to use lifts and were instead in the habit of lifting and moving patients manually, increasing their chances of injury. To combat this, St. Luke’s made sure that each unit had nurses with extra training on the lifts called “super users” to act as advocates for their use and to help other staff become comfortable using the equipment.

“It’s one thing for the safety officer or the rehab director to talk to them, but when you’ve got a leader on your floor, somebody that’s really advocating for the lifts – that’s a key piece,” Osborne said.

All of the nursing staff is trained when new lifting equipment is brought in, but the super users from each unit receive longer training sessions and help to train the staff on their unit and to continue to advocate for the proper utilization of this equipment for safe patient handling. Super users receive an additional four hours of training on the equipment, situational uses, a few more “tips and tricks” and some troubleshooting of various situations that might occur and how to teach the staff.

To check that the training sessions were successful, they began holding Super Users Lunches. Each time equipment was installed in a new unit, all the super users would get together for lunch to provide feedback.

Training gurus and super users

As an additional measure to transition the staff into using lifts and other safe patient handling techniques, St. Luke’s began an annual Safe Patient Handling Week. Several staff members have been sent to Barrier Free Access, now an SFM subsidiary, to receive an additional one and a half days of high level lift training called Guru Training.

These gurus share their expertise in using the lifts and assist the rest of the staff during every shift on every unit. The gurus also encourage use of the lifts and show the staff ways to make moving patients easier.

Whenever more safe patient handling equipment is purchased and put out on the units, a safe patient handling week is held with the gurus used for additional targeted training on all units during every shift.

In addition, rehab staff in the past have been hesitant to incorporate the use of lifts, as it appears to be at odds with the goals of having the patients move themselves and eventually progress to independence. Involving key rehab staff from the beginning to devise a system for assessment and implementation combining the goals of safe movement using devices with eventual progression (as able) to have the patient safely move themselves also contributed to the success.

Getting the employees fully involved in the transition, allowing them to provide input and then incorporating feedback they provided proved to be essential to building a successful safe patient handling program.

“It’s a team effort,” said Safety Officer Mike Marturano. “Get a team together and identify where your issues are and move forward through that.”

Photo courtesy of St. Luke’s Hospital

Driving can be especially dangerous in snowy and icy weather.

Share these tips for safe winter driving with your employees:

• Increase your following distance.
  It takes longer to stop in wet and icy conditions, so you’ll need to increase your following distance beyond the standard 2-second rule.
• Slow down, and allow plenty of travel time.
  The faster you drive, the harder it becomes to stop, especially in slippery conditions. Allow plenty of time to get to your destination so you have no reason to rush.
• Accelerate and make turns slowly and cautiously.
  This prevents you from losing control of the vehicle.
• It’s OK to reschedule.
  Is it really necessary to travel across town in a snowstorm for a meeting that could easily be rescheduled? Use common sense.
• Prepare your vehicle.
  Ensure windows are scraped, all snow is brushed off (from the entire car, not just the windows), headlights are cleared, tire pressure is correct (go by the sticker on your doorframe, not the side of the tire), wipers are functioning and there’s windshield washer fluid in the reservoir.
• Perform proper vehicle maintenance.
  Make sure tires are in good condition and treads haven’t become flush with the treadwear indicator bars. Inspect and replace windshield wiper blades when needed.
• Be aware of black ice, especially at intersections.
  This ice is tough to see, and it can send you sliding.
• Turn on your headlights in poor conditions.
  This helps you see and be seen.
• Be careful on bridges and overpasses.
  They can be slippery even when other roads are not.
• Stay back from snowplows.
  Stay at least 300 feet behind a snowplow, and never pass one because they create clouds of snow that can cause low visibility.
• Keep an emergency kit in your car.
  Include a blanket, warm clothes, something for traction (such as road salt, sand or kitty litter), a shovel, a first aid kit, a flashlight, jumper cables, a battery-powered radio, snack foods, water, emergency flares or reflectors, a tow chain or rope and a way to power your cell phone in the winter emergency kit in your car.

Check the resource catalog for safety talks and other resources related to safe winter driving.

It would be tough to overstate how highly Iowa-based manufacturer Katecho prioritizes its employees’ safety.

This maker of medical and cosmetic products has taken so many measures to keep workers safe that Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials have asked to showcase its facility to other businesses.

“You walk in the door and it’s clear that this place is special,” said SFM Loss Prevention Specialist Jason Clausen.

That’s why the company sprang into action after learning that a change intended to boost efficiency had drastically increased the amount of weight employees would have to lift.

Their solution: building a fully customized machine that would do the lifting for them.

‘We had to find a way’

One of the products Katecho manufactures is the gel pads that go between a patient suffering a cardiac arrest and an automated external defibrillator (AED).

To produce those pads, Katecho first makes large rolls of hydrogel. The hydrogel rolls start as huge rolls of raw components. These component rolls are brought in on pallets, lifted, moved 75 feet to a hydrogel coating machine and then lifted again onto spindles as high as 6 feet. After the coating process, the finished hydrogel rolls are removed from the machine, bagged, sealed and boxed.

Seeking to boost production and meet customer needs, the company began using wider rolls of the hydrogel, a change that increased the weight of the rolls from 40 to 350 pounds.

“We had to find a way to get these rolls up on the spindles without hurting people,” said Katecho Director of Manufacturing Chris Gunsaulus.

As a stopgap measure, they had their supplier shorten each component roll’s length for a 100-pound weight reduction. They also made it a requirement that no fewer than three people work together to lift the rolls. They tried purchasing a roll lifter made for just such a task, but it didn’t fit into the spaces where they needed to use it.

Out of options, they started drawing up specifications for a custom-made machine, and worked to build and install it with a northern Iowa company called Positech that specializes in industrial manipulators.

Side-benefit: Increased efficiency

The manipulator was strictly an investment in safety; however, improved efficiency has been a side-benefit. There’s no time wasted gathering everyone together and struggling to change rolls — a savings of up to two hours per day.

“It’s just made life a lot easier for us,” said machine operator Dan Chamberlain. “It’s definitely less strenuous on your muscles and your back.”

Despite the significant expense, Gunsaulus said they met no resistance from management in moving ahead with the plan to custom-build the machine.

“It’s really important that our people go home at night in the same state they came in,” he said. “People are here to earn a paycheck, not put their lives and limbs at risk.”

See video of the machine in action:

Elk River, Minnesota-based U.S. SiteWork in earthwork, excavation, underground utility construction, drilled piers/deep foundations and demolition for large projects such as industrial oil and gas sites, agricultural terminals, tank farms and railroad embankments. The organization was founded in 2012 by five seasoned professionals and places a major focus on safety. We talked with CEO Bart Anderson about why safety is so important to the organization.

(Conversation edited for length and clarity.)

You’ve stated that your primary mission as a company is safety. How did you arrive at that philosophy?

The safety focus of the industry has changed a lot in the last 15 or 20 years. In my past experience, even though my previous company had a great focus on safety, there were still guys in the field that hadn’t quite bought into the new safety culture that was coming from the top. It was a challenge over there, and I thought that we’re going to start this company and we’re going to put safety culture at the forefront of everything we do. Everybody we hire, we’re going to try to get the safety culture right in the beginning, and if the people we’re hiring don’t have the right mindset toward safety and dedication to it, then we don’t really want them working here. The five people that started this company, we didn’t start it to get people hurt. We started it to do it different, to try and do it better, and to set ourselves apart, and safety is one of those ways we try to set our company apart from the competition.

How do you hire for safety?

We’ll ask them some certain questions about their experience. Have they put a job hazard analysis together? What did they think of the safety culture at the previous company they worked at? Do they think it could be better and what would they change? Asking about five to eight questions like that, you can get a good feel for what kind of safety aptitude that certain individual has.

We’ve heard the strong economy is making it tough to find good employees. How do you find employees without lowering your standards?

It’s not a perfect process, but 99 percent of our employees get it. They understand the safety focus. They understand the dedication that we want all our crews to have every day. If we get new hires, we have a mentoring process where our experienced employees will work with them very closely. We watch them very closely the first two to three weeks they work here to see if they actually practice what they are preaching.

What are the practical things you do to keep workers safe?

We do safety training frequently throughout the year internally with our supervisors and our foremen. We try to get each one of them trained to a level where we could consider them a full-fledged safety director. From there you have to get every single person buying into zero injuries every day. The way we try to accomplish that is with a good, thorough job hazard analysis (JHA) every morning, and before every task. If we switch tasks throughout the day, we might do two or three JHAs. Each task is different, the job site changes as the day goes on, and we want to make sure we’ve analyzed all the hazards on the job site correctly so we can put in the proper mitigation techniques and methods to properly manage all those hazards.

Do you look at your safety program in terms of return on investment?

I think that’s kind of a gray area. It’s hard to calculate that. Some people have the mindset that all these safety measures cost production and cost contractors money, and I completely disagree with that. I think the safer you are and the more planned out your jobs are, the better they will run and the more production that you will get, and safety is a huge part of that. A better plan and better executed project should also be a safer project.

What’s your advice for other business leaders who want to make their workplaces safer?

If you’re going to walk the talk, you have to become educated in what makes a great safety culture and what will facilitate great safety performance. I read a ton of articles. I’ve been to a ton of seminars. I’ve been fortunate to work for some really great, safe companies that have taught me a lot. The industry and the clients that I’ve had over my career have driven me to try to be a safety expert. I don’t feel that I’m a safety expert, but I work hard to try to make myself more knowledgeable about safety and more savvy about safety every day.

This is not intended to serve as legal advice for individual fact-specific legal cases or as a legal basis for your employment practices.

With mass shootings making headlines disturbingly often, many employees have considered the possibility of a shooter terrorizing their workplace.

Employees at the Dallas County Hospital in Perry, Iowa, have gone beyond thinking about this frightening prospect. They’ve practiced for it through an active shooter drill.

The safety committee at the 25-bed hospital worked with local law enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security and the hospital’s SFM loss prevention representative to hold an active shooter drill in the summer of 2016. The fire chief from nearby Waukee, Clint Robinson, played the role of the shooter, using a whistle to signify gunshots. Employees who’d been “shot” were handed a piece of paper.

In just seven minutes, the shooter had nine victims and had made it through the entire facility. This was especially disconcerting because staff had been warned of the day the drill would take place, said the hospital’s Support Services Manager Julie Smith, who also chairs the safety committee.

“The whole day and into the next day, staff were still talking about it,” she said. “They were talking in terms of what they’d do differently if it really happened.”

For example, some staff members learned they would have been better off to shelter in place than to try to escape, she said. The actor who played the shooter wore an action camera so the safety committee could analyze video from the drill.

Drill required months of preparation

Although the drill went quickly, it was a long time in the making.

The hospital began planning last fall, starting with a risk assessment conducted by a U.S. Department of Homeland Security protective security advisor, which led to creation of an action plan to reduce the risks where possible. The hospital also required all staff members to take the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s web-based active shooter training course.

To train employees in every area of the building on what they should do in the event of an active shooter incident, the committee created a video showing the options to exit the building or shelter in place in locations throughout the hospital.

“It was worth the time and effort,” Smith said. “Until you practice things, all of your policies and procedures are just words on paper.”

More employers training on workplace violence

Dallas County Deputy Sheriff Max Roll, who worked with the hospital to plan the drill, said the department is getting more requests to assist with similar types of training.

“We would recommend that anybody that feels the need for their business to do it,” Roll said. “It’s always a good thing to have, especially in today’s environment.”

Roll said the department learned a lot from being part of hospital’s drill. Law enforcement has always trained on these types of scenarios, but organizations conducting similar training is a relatively new phenomenon, he said.

The hospital’s SFM Loss Prevention Representative Jason Clausen agreed that nowadays many types of employers should be thinking about providing this type of training. He said the hospital not only trained its staff on responding to an active shooter situation, but also provided training on de-escalation tactics to prevent tense situations from becoming violent whenever possible.

“Violence prevention is an extremely important component of any safety training on workplace violence,” Clausen said. “It’s admirable the hospital is working so hard to protect its employees.”

For more information on de-escalation tactics see these SFM resources:

• De-escalation Team Training – health care
• Alternative intervention & de-escalation tactics, 5-Minute Solutions safety talk
• Home health care: Violence prevention in the home, 5-Minute Solutions safety talk

Resources from the federal government to protect against active shooters in the workplace

Following are two resources provided by the federal government that SFM’s loss prevention representatives sometimes recommend to employers who want to do more to prepare for workplace violence:

• The Department of Homeland Security’s Protective Security Advisor program
  Through this program, government security experts work with organizations in government and the private sector to protect the country’s critical infrastructure. They conduct threat assessments, hold outreach activities, respond to incidents and provide training. Depending on the risk level, a protective security advisor might even tour your facility and provide suggestions for improving security. For more information, or to contact your local protective security advisor, email PSCDOperations@hq.dhs.gov.
• The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s active shooter training
  This free online course trains you on how to recognize potential workplace violence indicators, what to do in the event of an active shooter situation and how to prevent and prepare for such incidents. The course takes about 30-45 minutes plus time for the post-test. If you’d like to take the test and receive a certificate, sign up for a student identification number  before you take the course.

Another option you may want to consider is reaching out to local law enforcement for guidance.

Every organization is different, and there are many other resources available if these aren’t a good fit. It’s an unfortunate reality that nowadays organizations of all types and sizes must take steps to prevent and prepare for a violent situation in the workplace.

This is not intended to serve as legal advice for individual fact-specific legal cases or as a legal basis for your employment practices.

Independent School District 911, Cambridge-Isanti Public Schools , implemented a stepladder program to decrease falls from chairs, and got much more.

“By putting stepladders around our schools, giving teachers and other faculty easy access to them, we not only decreased the incidence of falls, but also saved our district time and money,” said Pamela Mix, human resources specialist.

As part of the district’s monthly incident and accident review process, it became evident that falls from faculty standing on tables, chairs and other unauthorized surfaces was a problem. The district’s safety and health committee decided the most effective way to decrease the risks of such falls was to provide stepladders in easy-to-access areas in every building in the district.

Previously, ladders were kept in custodial closets under lock and key, making them difficult for teachers to access. Placing stepladders throughout the departments saved employees time that would have been spent searching for a ladder.

To start the program, the safety and health committee worked with principals, head custodians and site staff to set criteria for which type of ladder to purchase. The criteria included things like maximum weight, means of storage, product material and number of steps or rungs. Based on the criteria, the committee gathered a variety of stepladders for trial.

After trying the ladders in a variety of ways and locations, the committee was able to make a selection and rolled out the stepladders to all schools within the district.

Program a success

Having the support of all school administrators and department heads was key to the success of this program. They helped communicate the expectations for use and storage of the stepladders, and reiterated the importance of safety.

“The feedback has been positive across the board. Our faculty is using the stepladders regularly and likes how easy they are to carry, use and store,” Mix said. “And since the implementation of the program, we have not seen one incident report of a fall from a table, chair or other unauthorized surface. We feel the program is a complete success.”

“As a bonus, this program encouraged others throughout the district to talk about safety in general. It got conversations going,” Mix said. “It showed that our employees are important and that we will provide the equipment they need to stay safe.”

This is not intended to serve as legal advice for individual fact-specific legal cases or as a legal basis for your employment practices.

Founded in 1988, ADO Products has become an industry leader in manufacturing insulation accessories, ventilation products and protective wear. All the while, CEO Jim Andrews has been making sure that employees — which now number about 65 — have a safe place to do their work. We asked Andrews how he does it and how others can do the same.

Where did your focus on safety originate?

We’re just celebrating 26 years in business, and I look back at the past with a lot of fondness. Nobody gives you a blueprint on how to start a business, and it’s been a learning process all along. In the beginning, we wanted to have our own business to provide some financial security, but more importantly we wanted to create a place that was a better type of work environment than where we came from. That ties into the philosophy of safety in our business.

First and foremost, you want somebody to be able to come to work and feel safe. One of the biggest concerns of every human being is that they want to feel safe, and we’ve built an environment where they have that.

How did you get started with controlling safety?

It’s not something that just happens overnight. It’s a process. We started with a safety committee around 20 years ago, and it’s met regularly ever since, living and breathing safety. It’s been an evolving process, to the point where we’ve begun reporting every incident that could have become an accident. We make it clear that it’s everybody’s responsibility to keep the workplace safe and clean. If you see a spill, you clean it up. If you see anything that might be unsafe, you report it. We address it immediately and put a corrective action plan in place. We preach it and we reward it.

How do you reward safety?

We try to keep it fresh and alive. We’ve organized all kinds of special events to keep safety on people’s minds, like our safety slogan contest. Every 90 days without a lost-time accident means we throw a pizza party. We just celebrated 10 years without a lost-time accident, and it could have been even longer.

How have your employees responded to your commitment to safety?

People around here live it. They understand that safety is of value, and they get it. If you asked anybody who works here what the number one priority in this company is, it’s safety over profits. We will never sacrifice safety for profits.

How has SFM helped with safety controls?

We’ll rely on SFM’s loss prevention people to come in and help us with another set of eyes. That’s really been great for us. We use the safety materials regularly, and conduct our safety training with SFM’s resources.

How do you measure the return on the investment you’re making in safety?

To me, safety is not an investment – it’s just a way of life. We do have the experience rating to go by, and ours is good enough to save us quite a bit on premiums, but for us it goes beyond saving money.

What’s your advice for other business leaders to ensure a safe workplace?

Think about it like you’re having guests in your home. The people who work with me are kind of like my guests, and that’s how I treat them. There’s really no difference in my mind between keeping guests safe in my home and keeping employees safe in the workplace. Would I want to have guests come over to my house and slip and fall because there’s ice all over the sidewalk? No. Would I want my guests to be subjected to furniture falling apart because they sit on it? No. If you look at safety that way, it carries forward in all aspects.