First-line supervisor

Management and Employee Cooperation. Before beginning to collect data, the cooperation of the managers involved, including the first line supervisor, and of the workers should be secured. Management needs to be informed so that they can be confident that surveillance activities will not upset production or lead to injuries. Workers need to know what the valuation means to them and how the results are to be reported. Everyone needs to know how the measurement is to be conducted so that the actual measurement causes as Htde dismption as possible. 

The personnel responsible for the collection and analysis of incident data vary in different organizations. One common practice is to assign the responsibility to an investigation team which includes the first line supervisor, a safety specialist and a plant worker or staff representative. Depending on the severity of an incident, other management or corporate level investigation teams may become involved. 

Authority and/or responsibilities of first-line supervisors or operators... 

This group includes operators, mechanics, first line supervisors, auxiliary staff groups such as technicians and engineers, and middle-level management. They should be trained on how to differentiate an incident from a nonincident and what to do once an incident is identified. 

An SPC program can be valuable when used on processes where production is steady. The best chance for successful application occurs when a team is formed, comprising the plant operators, first-line supervisors,... 

For hourly employees and first line supervisors, depicts actual accounts from people injured as resuit of risk taking. 

A process to confirm adequate preparation and application of controls prior to authorizing work at the activity level should be carried out by a qualified multidisciplinary team. First line supervisors should team with employees and safety and health professionals to ensure the activity-level hazards and controls needed to establish a safe working envirorunent. The hazard and complexity of work should determine the formality and rigor of the review process, documentation, and level of authority for agreement. 

Chemical exposure data as part of the hazard analysis and air sampling should be communicated to the occupational medical organization. These data and information on hazards experienced may be used by the first line supervisor to improve the safety of fiitme activities with the same type of exposures. 

In defining hazardous work practices, there are a number of sources of information that should be examined. Injury and accident reports such as the OSHA 301 Form provide information about the circumstances surrounding an injury. Often employee or management behaviors that contributed to the injury can be identified. Employees are a good source of information about workplace hazards. They can be asked to identify critical behaviors that may be important as hazard sources or hazard controls. First-line supervisors are also a good source of information because they are constantly... 

Drillers and well supervisors had proper training and certificates in First Line Supervisor s Blowout Prevention and Second Line Supervisor s Well Control , respectively. They not only had the training, but were prompt and accurate with implementation protocols outlined in these training and certificate programs. 

The first-line supervisors or team leaders should be educated, trained, and motivated to make safety, health, and loss prevention part of their everyday activities. First-line supervisors and team leaders must be provided the tools with which they can effectively manage the safety, health, and loss prevention function just as they manage production, quality, and the other job requirements. Necessary to acquire the appropriate buy-in are the commitment and motivation of upper-level management combined with the necessary education and training (i.e., the tools ) for supervisors or team leaders to manage safety and loss prevention effectively, as well as holding the supervisor or team leader accountable for the safety performance or achievement of the goals or objectives. 

Although Ferry went on to say that being close to a situation may preclude a supervisor from taking an unbiased approach to those causal factors that may reflect on his performance, he was nevertheless close in his estimate that first-line supervisors investigate about 90% of reported incidents (p. 9). 

Standards and directives Did middle supervision maintain the appropriate standards and directives Were they kept up to date and accessible to first-line supervisors and workers ... 

Compliance can depend on self-discipline after training. More often, enforcement involves someone else observing and critiquing the actions of others. Usually, this is a role for a supervisor. That is why some safety principles place the first line supervisor at the key person in achieving safety in a work group. 

Safety must be a part of every organizational element. Line elements must complete work safely. All workers need training for safe procedures. They need technical assistance of staff elements who have advance knowledge of safety. Each level of supervision or management in line elements must keep safety paramount. Otherwise, safety will lose its importance for levels below them. Safety must be part of leadership characteristics of every supervisor and manager. Some feel that first-line supervisors are the key to safe operations. They directly influence their workers and the tasks performed. 

Effective organizations thrive on strong leadership. Leadership is an essential part of achieving safety performance in an organization. There must be a commitment to safety from the top of an organization to the first line supervisors and workers. One way to gain that commitment is through effective safety leadership at all levels. 

The individual with the most impact on workplace safety and health must be the line supervisor. Almost everything that is communicated to the workers comes from the supervisor. The first-line supervisor sets the tone for his or her workplace and is the role model for the company by conveying, implementing, supporting, and enforcing... 

Just think of all that the first-line supervisor does ... 

Is it any wonder that the success or failure of the safety and health program depends on the first-line supervisor Certainly everyone would acknowledge that the first-line supervisor is responsible for safety and health within his or her work area. But seldom is he or she evaluated on his or her safety and health performance in the same manner as his or her production performance. Until such time that each supervisor is held as accountable for safety and health as production, with equal consequences for poor safety and health performance as for poor production performance,... 

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