The client
FlexiForce Canada is a manufacturing company in British Columbia, Canada which serves customers throughout the Americas.
The need
The client was interested in enhancing their existing occupational health and safety program and pursuing the Occupational Safety Standard of Excellence (OSSE).
The solution
I used the Manufacturing Safety Alliance’s OSSE Readiness Self-Assessment Tool to benchmark the company’s safety program and conduct a thorough gap analysis to identify opportunities for improvement. During my time on the project, we saw a 10% overall improvement in the OSSE Readiness score as a result of various improvements to the core of the safety program itself, including the implementation of a multi-hazard emergency response plan, as well as the introduction of industry-specific programs for Contractor Safety Management, Lockout/Tagout, Hot Work, and WHMIS (Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System).
I also created a Safety Dashboard which became the focus for discussions within the Joint Occupational Health and Safety Committee, and for reporting to the management team. Injuries were tracked by type, department, body part, and primary cause. Medical Aid and Lost Time Injuries were reduced through root cause investigation and the introduction of a Recover at Work program.
We introduced a ticketing system for tracking safety improvement requests and completions. Requests were categorized by risk severity, and particular attention was given to high-risk items, though we saw significant reductions in the number of open requests in all categories as the severity tended to correlate with the complexity.
The Safety Committee members were empowered to take responsibility for the factory areas they represented, and with coaching the tone of the conversations at monthly meetings shifted from complaining to positively talking about what had been done and what support was needed on particularly challenging issues.