#67: Is Your Safety Culture Stressing Your Employees Out?

Could something as simple as a microwave be driving up injuries at your manufacturing facility?  We think it very well could be, but it goes deeper than that.  It goes all the way to the culture and environment your employees are working in.  Does your facility have any of these top risks that can drive up stress, and in turn risk of injury? Join us with special guest George Mazzuca this week where we break it all down, and talk about our experiences working in the plants, along with what stressed us out!  Full episode summary below: 

Key Discussion Points:

1. Smoking Areas:

Smoking areas can inadvertently increase stress when they are too far from workstations or in poor weather conditions.

Solutions: Install additional smoking areas closer to key work areas or provide sheltered, weatherproof spaces to reduce break-time inconvenience.

2. Guard Shack Delays:

Long lines at guard shacks during shift changes create delays and anxiety about clocking in on time.

Solutions: Increase the number of lanes during peak times, streamline inspections with clear bag policies, and optimize staffing for guard duties.

3. Parking Lot Challenges:

Large parking lots often mean lengthy walks to entrances, exacerbated by weather conditions.

Solutions: Designate closer parking spots for different shifts or implement shuttle services to ensure timely access.

4. Cafeteria Microwave Shortages:

A lack of microwaves leads to long lines and rushed meals during short break periods.

Solutions: Invest in additional microwaves to accommodate all employees or stagger break times to minimize congestion.

5. Wet Floors:

Wet floors during pre-op and sanitation increase the risk of slips and add to morning stress.

Solutions: Use squeegee teams to quickly dry floors, lay down anti-slip mats, and clearly mark safe walkways.

6. Leaving Work on Time:

Employees often leave a few minutes early to avoid parking lot traffic, creating coverage gaps and added stress for remaining staff.

Solutions: Stagger end times to reduce bottlenecks and improve parking lot flow.

7. Pre-Op Stress:

Pre-op sanitation and equipment setup delays affect the entire production schedule, increasing stress levels for all involved.

Solutions: Build buffer times into the schedule, ensure communication between teams, and prioritize efficient setups.

8. Lockout Accessibility:

Hard-to-reach lockout points deter proper compliance and increase frustration.

Solutions: Relocate lockout points to more accessible locations and provide practical solutions for elevated equipment.

9. Holiday Season Stress:

The holidays bring additional pressures with altered schedules, family obligations, and increased travel.

Solutions: Encourage flexibility, stagger schedules, and prioritize employee well-being during this busy time.

SEO Keywords:

Workplace safety stress, employee morale, guard shack delays, wet floors safety, parking lot management, lockout safety tips, cafeteria solutions, pre-op sanitation stress, holiday workplace stress, Allen Safety podcast, safety protocols improvement.

This video is intended for educational purposes.  Solutions offered are not designed to take the place of an attorney or medical professional, and should not be taken as legal or medical advice.  It is recommended that viewers consult a safety consultant, medical provider or an occupational safety legal team as applicable to help navigate their specific circumstances.  

Transcript

Safety Stressors in the Workplace

Speaker 1 0:00

All right. Today's episode is safety. Stressing you out yes.

Speaker 2 0:04

Too much.

Speaker 1 0:05

Yeah, that's today's episode. Hi, welcome to our episode. This Joe, this George, we're out on safety Episode day. Safety, stressing you out. People say yes all the time. Yes, too much, actually Kind of like I'm wearing my OSU hat Sometimes. Watching them play football stresses me out. People say yes all the time. Yes, too much, actually Kind of like I'm wearing my OSU hat Sometimes. Watching them play football stresses me out.

Speaker 2 0:30

Yes, anytime we watch sporting events right World Series right now football can stress us out. Also, dealing with safety in the plants can stress us out sometimes.

Speaker 1 0:39

Absolutely so. Holidays are coming up, we'll start getting stressed and one of the things they want to do they want to go for a smoke. So they want to go for a smoke to calm their stress down. Where the smoking area is could actually stress them out.

Speaker 2 0:52

Yeah, so you wouldn't really think so, but how far am I actually having to walk in order to go have a smoke? And if we put it way too far away, that's cutting into my break time.

Speaker 1 1:02

Now it's bad weather. Now far away that's cutting into my break time. Now it's bad weather, now it's a little slick. Now I'm trying to hurry.

Speaker 2 1:09

There's 48 of us in this little bitty box, tiny little shit, little shit or a little yeah exactly, yeah, um. So again we're saying, hey, you have to go all the way out here in order to smoke, so you can be compliant, but I have to walk that far, maybe two or three minutes away. I smoke for a few minutes, two or three minutes back. Now I really don't have a break like that. Essentially, walking to the smoke check was my break that's correct.

Speaker 1 1:31

All right, so that's one of them. I'm gonna give you a few here today. Let's talk about the guard check and get ready to go through a guard check at a plant. Right, there's 40 people in front of me. One guard checking things real slow. That stresses me out, kind of like when I'm getting ready to get on a flight, you know, and I'm like, let's go, I need to go, because it's hard to plan for how long that's going to take when you start work that day.

Speaker 2 1:54

Yeah, so my start time might be five o'clock in the morning or three o'clock in the afternoon, and now I have to adjust how much time I'm allotting for that because all these? People funneling funneling to the the guard shack at the same time, right, yeah, literally all the exact same time. So now it's affecting how long. So instead of being able to get through the guard shack in five minutes, it takes me 10 or 15. I have to plan for that, otherwise I'm gonna end up clocking in late, you know so it's a stressor.

Speaker 1 2:18

Give me some more lanes in the morning, yeah exactly it's like florida-based. When you evacuate, sometimes they open a lot of lanes or they'll get rid of the tolls so everybody can get through quicker. Well, guess what? At a guard shack, give me some more lanes in the morning so I can get on into work.

Speaker 2 2:32

Exactly no-transcript.

Speaker 1 2:51

It's just ways you can think about it. There you go, yeah. So we had smoking air, the guard check. Let's talk about the parking lots. It seems like plant. I got there way early, 40 minutes early.

Speaker 2 3:06

I still can find a parking spot right and I'm texting the plant. Where do you?

Speaker 1 3:08

want me to park exactly longer and longer as the day goes.

Speaker 2 3:09

Yeah, so depending on what time of day you go to any one of these plants I mean, some of these plants have, you know, two, three thousand employees man, I like parking lots as big as walmart, but you're parking all the way at the back yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 3:19

So I'm either parking way at the back and it's going to take me 10 minutes just to walk up to, you know, to the entrance, uh, or I have to show up really early to get a decent parking spot or a parking spot at all right, so that definitely affects you now I got the weather.

Speaker 1 3:31

So now we're about do I run through the parking lot, slip trip and fall?

Speaker 2 3:34

do I you know what am I going to do to get there exactly any of your plants that were uh, you have colder weather, could snow? Uh, you know.

Speaker 1 3:41

Now I'm having to worry about walking through the snow or, potentially, you know, if they didn't get out to put salt down or anything like that now I'm walking through a slick parking lot potentially have a slip trip but the safety rules are you know look in a certain area, make sure you get your stuff inspected with the guard, check, make sure you park and be here on time, don't run in the park no running, these things are stressing the people out and I'm not saying they're good or bad, but we should we should analyze that and make it user friendly for your people.

Speaker 2 4:08

Yeah, anything we can do so safety is put in place to protect people and to protect your employees. So anything that we can do to make an employee's life better is the whole point of safety. Right, we're there trying to protect people and save them from an injury, not trying to make it so stressful, or or add to that right to the where they could actually have an injury because they're trying to make it so stressful, or add to that right to the where he could actually have an injury because they're trying to comply with safety all right, here's one.

Speaker 1 4:28

It's kind of interesting. This one is I'm going to the cafeteria, I'm going to eat lunch and I decide I want to be healthy. I decided I want some rice chicken, but I don't really like eating it cold all the time. I want to warm it up. George goes, yeah, but what if they only got like three microwaves and there's?

Speaker 2 4:44

a hundred of you.

Speaker 1 4:45

Yeah, I'm stressing out Cause each meal takes a minute to two minutes to heat up. I'm waiting to heat up my food. I'm stressed. I got to get back to the floor. I may be lightheaded Maybe, like you know, I need to eat something because I want to do the right thing and I've just the time just gets away from it.

Speaker 2 5:01

Yeah, there's the only time I have to eat, right? Yeah, so one of the things that a lot of the plants, one of the big complaints that we have, is not enough microwaves or, you know, too many people trying to heat up their food at the same time. It's not really something you think about in these industries until you've lived it and I'm trying to warm up my food with a hundred other people. Like you said, there's a hundred. Uh, one of the biggest issues is my food didn't warm up properly. I didn't get there. Yeah, exactly. Now it's going to be like Luke warm, I didn't warm it up the way I should have, or I'm trying to find other ways to be a little more creative went up to warm up your food and the whole point is trying to get there to be able to warm up your food faster, so that I'm able to get all that done in my short break time, so that I can get back to the floor.

Speaker 1 5:48

Another one was the slick floors. First thing in the morning I show up ready to go to work, but I don't be wet first thing in the morning. So what happens is I go there, the floors are wet, wet. The parking lot may be wet, the entryway may be wet, maybe my workstation's wet. It's a lot of water I'm dealing with first thing in the morning, and it's it's message stressing me out, cause I'm like I'm already wet. I just started my day.

Speaker 1 6:12

I would never say to my kid only the wet areas you need to walk through, not the dry areas.

Speaker 2 6:16

It's wet here. Go walk there, son.

Speaker 1 6:18

No, you wouldn't go around so you don't slip or fall.

Speaker 2 6:22

Yeah exactly, and that's the thing that. Uh, we deal with pre-op, right. So you have pre-op and the floors are all wet and we need to sanitize. Yes, food safety is very important, we understand that. But now I'm asking employees to go totally wet. Now, if you don't, you know, if I don't take the the excess water off of that cutting board, or if I'm not careful where I walk, now I I have another, you know, a slip trip.

Speaker 1 6:46

You know absolutely all right, so now we've got um going home on time so there's been some events in history where people have left early because they want to get out of the plant, to get ahead of the traffic, get ahead of the parking lot and there's been some pretty major events over there.

Workplace Stress Management Strategies

Speaker 1 7:02

So it's you go ahead, cover for me. I'm gonna leave about three minutes early or five minutes early, I'll cover for you tomorrow and then we rotate. I can get out of the parking lot. It's all about the parking lot and how we manage that time. Getting out of there is what's creating that stress of that right yeah, of course.

Speaker 2 7:18

so I I have lived in the plants, I know that it works like this and I need to get out at least five or ten minutes early to beat the traffic. If I don't, then I'm stuck waiting for people to go out and it just turns into a little bit of an issue there. So we're going to cover each other. We work in the same department. Hey, you leave early, pulling double count, essentially.

Speaker 1 7:41

Absolutely Right. So we put more stress on the people doing that job. At the end of the day, when you're the tiredest, you're stressing out. Your body's tired, you start getting injuries off of that?

Speaker 2 7:48

Oh yeah, of course. Like you said at the end of the day, I've been working all day.

Speaker 1 8:05

Now at the very end of the day, when I am tired, I'm to also go a little faster. So yeah, it creates some issues for sure. All right, so now I got some food safety pre-op in the morning, being on time. If you've ever had any plant, we're a food plant. You ever any plant? The startup time, the thing that stresses everybody out, with a lot of people bringing in different sanitation or doing different tasks. You're seeing that even just regular thing that you'll see sometimes, the delay time in the morning because something wasn't done. Maybe a certain way that stress creates its own environment first thing in the morning oh, of course.

Speaker 2 8:23

So pre-op in general is stressful, right, I'm looking for any kind of issues making sure the sanitation, uh, sanitation team did a good job, and then, beyond that, now we're saying, hey, I need to start up at 5, 5, 30, whatever your start time is. Any minute past that, you know, is considered, you know, taboo. We cannot go past.

Speaker 1 8:39

We're feeling it. We're feeling the stress. Everybody's like, well, I gotta go, I gotta set my equipment. Can I get back on the floor?

Speaker 2 8:44

Let's go. You got maintenance, trying to set up the floor. You got pre-op.

Speaker 1 8:49

I still gotta lock out, I gotta make sure I'm doing this right Now.

Speaker 2 8:51

you got saw operators that are trying to set up their equipment. Did maintenance take theirs?

Speaker 1 8:55

and I gotta put my pp, all these things, everything's wet so there's a lot I'm going through what I'm trying to get the floors, of course and it's, it's an overall feeling.

Speaker 2 9:05

Anybody who's had to deal with that as a day shifter or anybody working pre-op, you know that that's kind of the feel, uh. But the big thing is there's a reason why we're trying to do. We want to do pre-op right so that we have the floor in in the proper condition, but we still want people to start and not be, you know, putting themselves at risk and potentially hurting themselves.

Speaker 1 9:22

Absolutely All right, lockout. So I've got a lockout of piece of equipment, but we put the valve up there. We put the valve over there we put the valve around over there.

Speaker 1 9:33

I really don't want to go like that. I'm running out of time, I'm aggravated, I don't want to lock it out. I I'm aggravated, I don't want to lock it out. I want to see. Maybe it works, maybe it don't. Maybe I just turn it off, yeah. And you create that stress in that environment because now, if it's high, I could use a ladder. Now I may have to tie off, now I may have to get an elevated work permit. There's all these things that may do whatever plant you're working at, just to lock out, lower the lockout yep, that's what you gotta do make it more accessible.

Speaker 2 9:56

I mean, as a safety person, you say, hey, you have to lock that out. You also need to be practical and realistic about where I'm actually going to lock this out. If I have my machine here and my lockouts on the other end of the floor, it's just not realistic to think that every time that I'm going to work on that machine that I'm going to go all the way over there to lock it out. So then you'll start running into issues where people are going to violate lockout, putting themselves at risk, and so, as a safety person, we don't want safety to stress somebody out. Right? That's the whole point of this video. Make sure that you're making it more accessible for them to bring that and have a local disconnect here. That's fine, because what we end up seeing is I'll shut the machine off and I'll run the risk of maybe I'm not going to lock it out this time because I'm in a hurry.

Speaker 3 10:37

I got to get this thing going right now.

Speaker 2 10:38

You know, unfortunately, you run into those issues as they violate lockout or potentially put themselves at risk when in reality if you could just put it right there you know you take a lot of those excuses away and you make their job easy. Absolutely, these are our opinions.

Speaker 1 10:51

Please do a thorough risk assessment that your facility. Holidays are coming up. They're talking about it. A lot of different schedules, kids schedules, family schedules, food schedules, travel, travel, stress. So what we want you to do on this episode? Hopefully it gives you some things to look at. Think outside the box a little and think yourself for each one of these.

Speaker 1 11:14

What could I do to gain time back? The number one thing that people do not have seems to be a time time at work, time at home, time, anything we got little league and everything else going on. So how do we gain that time back? So take some of these ideas add a few more microwaves, maybe get a second smoking area. Maybe put a couple more guards. The guard check in the morning. Maybe for the the slick floors, have someone go through the squeegee and try to get them as dry as you can. Going home on time, maybe look at the flow of the people. Do we really need everybody to be here at this time, or can we have some people come in now? 20 minutes later, 10 minutes later, you know what we stagger it.

Speaker 1 11:52

Yeah, stagger it out so we're not having all people through the parking lot at the same time time. And lock alley said move the stuff down to easier access. We take your pre-op being on time. Work with your crews that at two o'clock we need to be ready, not 4 30 be ready. Our plan on how we can be ready at two so we need time is a buffer to 4 30. That's fine to build in those buffer times. Don't say we do a lot of pre-op, a lot of sanitation, so just don't say you need to be done with the job at five, I don't be done at four, so something's wrong.

Speaker 2 12:11

You got that time yeah, that hour buffer exactly, and that's, you know, this time of year it's a general feeling, right? Everybody is going to have their mind on other things, are going to be a little bit stressed out. So, just in general, even with your personal life, people are going to be a little bit stressed out. So just keep that in mind, right? So, on top of the fact that maybe safety doesn't always make it easy on us, make sure that if you're a safety professional in one of these plans, or if you're in management, you guys are taking into account the people that do this stuff day in and day out. What am I actually asking you to do, right? Is it making your job easier? Is it making it more safe? Am I actually creating more of a hazard by trying to have you comply with the safety programs?

Speaker 1 12:46

All right, that is our episode for today. That is our episode for today. Thank you, george. Thank you and have a good day everyone.

Speaker 3 12:51

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