BACK TO WORK



Hayward iLevel employees won't

let a recordable get them down

By Mark Ziegler
Weyerhaeuser Today
October 2007



In May 2006, the team at the Hayward, Calif., iLevel service center was planning a celebration. In three months, they'd reach five years without a recordable incident and throw themselves a pat-on-the-back party.

Then they saw their laudable safety record end with an untimely injury.

"We were devastated. Miserable," says Jim Baron, residential sales representative who serves as chairman of the center's safety team.

Yet the incident spurred the team to rededicate itself to the goal of 100 percent safety for all employees and visitors.


"CULTURE WASN'T UP TO PAR"

Baron describes how, six years ago, the facility went from three recordables in six months to a spotless record for the next 45 and then got back on track after the big disappointment.

"At one time, there was the sense that the safety culture here wasn't up to par," he remembers. "Only a couple of people were responsible for safety. People weren't aware and didn't have ownership of it. I was a sales guy, and we thought safety was for the people who drove forklifts. Sales and Administration just weren't involved."

That culture began to change around the time new management arrived at the facility, says Baron. One of the most successful steps was the creation of a health and safety team made  up of seven subcommittees. Each employee was required to join at least one subcommittee, with each chairman sitting on the main safety team. Awareness and ownership increased as a large red digital board was hung in the facility's lobby, displaying the ever-growing days since the last incident. And all visitors began receiving a safety orientation and equipment before entering the plant.


STREAK-ENDING INCIDENT

Still, those and other measures didn't prevent the 2006 incident at an outdoor area covered by an awning. Ironically, the area serves as a safe zone for drivers waiting as their trucks are unloaded. Instead, a sloped entrance caught a "very tall" (and hard-hatted) Weyerhaeuser associate, whose head was snapped back and neck injured.

'"Everyone knows that awning, yet no one saw it at as a hazard," admits Baron. "We were all seriously bummed, but we were determined to get back on the path and straight to five."

That path included a challenge from Carlos Guilherme, iLevel's vice president of Sales, to "walk through the facility and look at it with a fresh set of eyes."

Among the hazards the walkthrough illuminated were the large warehouse door shared by both forklift and foot traffic. Additional doors now separate the traffic.

Other doorways and walkways were evaluated, notes Baron, and potential trip hazards removed. Overall, there was a "heightened sense of awareness ... we didn't take things for granted anymore."

And there was that once-overlooked sloped entrance into the awning area. The issue was resolved quickly -- and not through the hiring of shorter employees. Barricades were erected on three sides, with the single entrance now at least 9 feet high.

"There's just no way that any human could bump it now," says Baron.

As a husband and a father of two small kids, he says his own personal safety, as well as that of all others at Hayward, is paramount.

"Our team's overall goal is for everyone to go home in the same good shape they came to work in. Because that's what safety is all about."

This May, the Hayward plant celebrated one incident-free year since the mishap.