Stress, Distraction of Paper Industry Business Cause Need for Creating a Safety 'Culture'

Pulp & Paper, Dec 2003 by Topf, Michael

At companies like Smurfit-Stone, getting employees to act safely is more about changing attitudes rather than just making sure they know how to act in the workplace

In recent years, acquisitions, mergers, reorganizing, re-engineering, downsizing, and "right-sizing" have become commonplace. Reductions in staff and efforts to economize have become top priorities.The pulp and paper industry is no exception to this trend, with companies working nonstop to eliminate waste, reduce costs, and maintain or increase profits. In such an environment, what happens to efforts to prevent accidents and resulting loss?

At Chicago-based Smurfit-Stone Container Corp., safety innovation has helped the company meet these challenges and, as a result, become stronger. The company has always been dedicated to teaching employees to pursue their work tasks with safety in mind. Yet, even with the best engineering, safeguards, training, equipment, and procedures, employees at all levels don't always apply what they know. As a result, injuries and incidents occur both on and off the job.

Levels of distraction and errors in judgment are compounded when employees are worried about a company's future and their employment status. Stress, which was found to be a factor based on research to determine the causes of accidents and injuries for a major chemical company in 1983, is at record levels in many workplaces. Emotional distress can feed into distrust of management and can erode employee relations, communications, cooperation, and teamwork, ultimately affecting safety, health, and environmental performance.

Deteriorating fundamentals in the pulp and paper industry have increased stress and distractions for pulp and paper employees throughout the country. But it's not only negative changes that distract employees. Increased production demands, new equipment, increased responsibilities, cross training, and new management initiatives also play a part.

When an employee is worried about being laid off, sidetracked by challenging new duties, or concerned about problems at home, he or she does not bring a clear mind to the job.This diminished ability to focus can lead to injury and decreases a worker's ability to look after his or her own safety and that of others. As a result, savvy companies are looking for new and better ways to protect their people.

IDENTIFYING RESISTANCE TO CHANGE.

Attitudinal and behavioral barriers stand in the way of safety excellence (Figure 1). Essential to the process of creating breakthroughs in performance is involving all levels of employees in identifying and resolving barriers. Experience has helped identify barriers that can form a web to entrap a business, stymieing progress in incident and injury prevention, production, quality, and customer service.These barriers can include:

*Counterproductive beliefs-Beliefs such as "It won't happen to me," or "I've done it this way 1,000 times before," encourage risk taking. Or the alternative, "It won't happen to them, they know what they are doing," can encourage hourly or management employees to ignore safety instructions or overlook risk taking in themselves or others to produce results.

*Fear, distrust, and stress-Fear of layoffs and increased production pressures result in a tendency to rush and ignore safety procedures. And higher stress levels produce inattention, fatigue, and loss of focus.

*Lack of participation-Old-school "command and control" thinking prevents hourly and management employees from contributing their expertise in finding solutions to resolving barriers and making improvements.

*Poor communication-Employees who do not inform coworkers when they are about to engage in a hazardous activity present a real threat to themselves and others. For example, a craft worker enters a tank alone and fails to notify anyone. Risk is also increased when a change in a safety policy/procedure fails to "make it down the line."

*Lack of management support- Although management claims that "people are our most important asset," the company's failure to promote safe practices and a lack of funding for safety improvements sends the opposite message.

*Sins of the past-Employees at any level often feel discouraged about discussing unsafe conditions or suggesting ideas for safety improvement because they remember when they or someone else did this and were ignored.

*Lack of responsibility-Employees who believe that their safety is someone else's responsibility (like a supervisor's or safety rep's) are less likely to take responsibility for their own or others' safety. And they're not as open to improvement strategies.

*Lack of intervention-Employees at all levels hesitate to intervene when they observe another's unsafe behavior.

*Lack of consistency-It's confusing when one week a supervisor is intent on production at any cost but the next week states at a safety meeting that safety is the company's top priority.

*Lack of leadership-When supervisors, managers, or safety leaders fail to wear personal protective equipment or follow other safety rules, they lose credibility as role models. Unless safety is consistently included in work instructions, employees will not consider it important.