Employee Involvement in Process Safety

Employee involvement in process safety management Process safety information (right to know)... 

This is one of the ways to get all employees involved in the safety process allowing them to participate in the inspection process. Refer to Chapter 7 for more information on how to use employees in the process. One way to get employees involved is to form employee committees or joint employee-management committees to help conduct routine inspections. By implementing these methods, you can ... 

Many opportunities can be used to get employees involved in the safety process. For example, to promote employee involvement, you can ask them to be involved in the development of hazard assessment, inspections, preventative maintenance, training, emergency response, and loss-producing reporting systems. 

A strong central structure can have an organizational culture that readily reinforces the safety process at all locations. The organization may have a general culture that espouses a participative style. This style is ideal to enhance the safety culture as it can increase employee involvement in the safety management system. 

Before we start our discussion on how to get employees involved in the safety process, we need to step back and look at reasons why employees do not always want to get involved. 

A member of the central safety committee should be designated to guide and administer the JHA process. This person would use cross-functional ad hoc teams to develop and maintain diversity and expertise for development of a portfolio of JHAs. The JHA ad hoc teams would develop specific JHAs based on the risk assessment list developed using the risk guidance card. They would draw on experience and expertise of employees and supervisors in the department or area where the job resides. Refer to Chapter 8, Getting Your Employees Involved in the Safety Management System . 

Use a charter to clearly define how they will operate and use the JHA process. The charter should be authorized by the leadership team as approved by the central safety committee. Refer to Chapter 8, Getting Your Employees Involved in the Safety Management System and Appendix O. 

This edition also includes eight new case studies. The new case studies show the long-term effectiveness of a behavioral approach (Chapter 24), illustrate the effectiveness of a self-observation process (Chapter 25), and document the effectiveness of behavioral safety in smaller organizations (Chapter 26). Finally, an invited chapter from Alicia Alevero and John Austin presents their research that demonstrates the positive impact that conducting observations has on the observer] This research on what they have entitled the observer effect is important because it documents the value of getting employees involved in conducting safety observations. I am excited to be able to include a summary of their research in Chapter 27. 

You will find forms to help you identify and track hazards, as well as forms to help you get employees involved in the safety process by providing their feedback, which is an important part of any safety and health program. 

Initial and periodic refresher re-training (at least every 3 years) are required by the OSHA and EPA standards. This training is to ensure that each employee involved in operating a process (1) understands and adheres to the current operating procedures of the process (including emergency shutdown) (2) understands the specific safety and health hazards (3) can perform the safe work... 

The OSHA standard requires that aU pertinent information be provided to employees involved in (1) compiling Process Safety Information, (2) performing Process Hazards Analysis, (3) developing... 

Increases in any of our three main HRM practices— epdm. Employee Participation in Decision Making epfr. Employee Participation in Financial Returns and mgtcult, the level of management involvement in the safety processes of the firm—all lead to substantial reductions in workers compensation costs per employee. In Table 3.6, we measured per-employee safety gains both as a unit change in each of these indices and as a change to the Tjest practice levels. 

Contractors. Identifies responsibilities of work site employer and contract employers with respect to contract employees involved in maintenance, repair, turnaround, major renovation, or specialty work, on or near covered processes. Contract employers are required to train their employees to safely perform their jobs, document that employees received and understood training, assure that contract employees know about potential process hazards and the work site employer s emergency action plan, assure that employees follow safety rules of the facility, and advise the work site employer of hazards contract work itself poses or hazards identified by contract employees. 

Companies involved in processing certain hazardous chemicals are required to take additional precautions to protect the employees. The purpose is to prevent or minimize the consequences of catastrophic releases of toxic, reactive, flammable, or explosive chemicals that may result in toxicity, fire, or explosion hazards. They are required to document what the company has done in regard to process safety if... 

Do employees complain that new facilities, equipment, materials, or processes are hazardous Do any employees say they have been involved in job safety analysis or process review and are satisfied with the results Does the safety and health staff indicate ignorance of existing or potential hazards at the worksite Does the occupational nurse, doctor, or other healthcare provider understand the potential occupational diseases and health effects in this worksite ... 

Case 3. A chemical company with 1,200 employees has found numerous ways to include its employees in the site s safety and health program. For example, the Safety and Health Committee, which includes equal labor and management representatives, has responsibility for a variety of activities, such as monthly plant inspections, incident investigations, and examination of any unsafe conditions in the plant. Employees are also involved in process and operations review, safety inspection, and quality teams. Two hourly employees work fulltime at monitoring the safety and health performance of on-site contractors. 

The common theme in each of these cases is that employees were not involved in the process nor asked for their insight. Instead, a mandated solution was forced upon them. This type of approach is authoritarian and not a participatory organizational culture. If you continue to respond to problems with limited discussions and analysis, why would you then expect employees to want to be involved in solving safety issues Based on these lessons learned, take a look at your own organization to see if you can identify similar situations. 

If employees are encouraged to offer their ideas/suggestions and their ideas/suggestions are taken seriously, they will be more productive and more motivated to become involved in the safety process (Managing worker safety and health, n.d.). 

As a point of beginning, determining if employees have a level of trust that the leadership team is serious about asking for their involvement in the safety process is crucial. In your evaluation of the organizational culture, an assessment of the level of trust between all employees provides an indication of the potential success of the safety management system. 

If the process is voluntary, the organization has a way of measuring complacency. When employees begin to get complacent about safety, they stop conducting observations. These organizations must then take action to promote safety awareness and get employees involved in safety improvement efforts. When observations are mandatory, the organization will often continue to get observation forms and be unaware of a growing complacency toward safety. 

This is a process used to check how effective your safe operating procedures are and if there is a need to make changes to control the hazards of the job. Before the start of any task or operation, the designated competent or company authorized person should evaluate the task or operation to identify potential hazards and to determine the necessary controls. This assessment should focus on actual worksite conditions or procedures, which differ from, were not anticipated, or were not related to other hazard analyses. In addition, the competent person shall ensure that each employee involved in the task or operation is aware of the hazards related to the task or operation and of the measures or procedures to use for protection. Note that the job safety assessment is not intended to be a formal, documented analysis, but instead is more of a quick check of actual site conditions and a review of planned procedures and precautions. 

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