Safety lessons from an FMA safety award winner

Editor's Note: For more information on the FMA Safety Awards program, click here.

All metal fabricators undertake new initiatives all the time. Sustaining those efforts over a prolonged period of time can be a bit more challenging. Permanent behavioral change does not come easy.

When it comes to changing safety behavior in a manufacturing facility, the stakes are high. After all, the goal is keeping everyone safe so that they can return home in the same condition they went to work.

PlayCore, a manufacturer of playground and recreation equipment with headquarters in Chattanooga, Tenn., has enjoyed having one of its manufacturing locations, the Southern Fulfillment Center in Fort Payne, Ala., honored with the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association’s Safety Award of Merit for five consecutive years. (The Safety Award of Merit is given to FMA member companies that have an injury and illness rate for the reporting period that is better than the published Bureau of Labor Statistics rate by 10 percent or greater, based on their NAICS code.) To find out some of the things that the company has done to maintain its safety streak of excellence, The FABRICATOR spoke with Darrel Shankles, PlayCore’s health and safety manager and chair of FMA’s Safety Council. He has been with the company for 11 years and is based at the company’s Fort Payne facility.

The FABRICATOR: What are some of the most common health risks at PlayCore?

Darrel Shankles: It’s mostly sprains, strains, and lacerations related to material handling and the job in general. The metals shop is approximately 80 percent of the manufacturing staff. Here we work with galvanized pipe, sheet metal, and tube. We bend, shape, form, cut, drill, weld, paint, and package the metal. We also have a plastics department where rotational molding is performed. This process produces the slides, roof tops, and other play accessories.

We are essentially a job shop. We have about 25,000 different parts. We work with customers to design their unique play units, and then all of the parts are custom-built, molded, and painted to their unique specifications.

FAB: What is done to prevent some of these health risks?

Shankles: My goal is to teach all employees to be a safety manager. I tell every employee that I want them to know as much as I do, and I want them to assess risk and be a part of managing their own safety efforts.

FAB: What was the safety effort like when you first went to work for PlayCore?

Shankles: The company was looking to create a better workplace. They had the understanding that a safe workplace is a better workplace from the standpoint of cost and just being a good citizen of the community.

They felt that a safe workplace is where they wanted to go because of safety and profitability being very closely related.

When I first started, our injury and workers’ comp rates were higher than similar manufacturing facilities of this type. The safety program had lots of opportunities to improve. The company understood they wanted to take action to get things under control.

FAB: What were some of the first activities that you initiated to help change that culture?

Shankles: We first began with an emphasis on marketing safety in the workplace: Employees’ safety is important. The first year we had lots of food rewards, feeding the plant and individual departments whenever they did safe work. That was a large part of it. Good food gets folks’ attention!

We also changed up orientation for new employees. A large emphasis on safety was added. During this time in the process, we were a much more seasonal employer. I knew that getting new employees behind safety would change a lot of things.

The newcomers helped to change the employees who had worked here for a long time. We have a lot of longtime employees—25-, 30-, 35-year employees. Changing them was kind of like changing the direction of the Titanic. It was very slow.

We also began depending on employees that serve on the safety committee. Listening to this group helped to find areas that we could work on. The safety committee played a huge part in the turnaround.

Even with these efforts, we knew things weren’t going to change overnight, but we saw some changes. We went from 32 injuries, which occurred the year before I started here, to 16 injuries in my first year. Then the next year it was eight injuries. We kept driving that down in the first few years.

Being able to show company leaders that safety does pay was a great reward for me as the support for the safety program grew exponentially. We cut the mod rating in half. [“Mod rating” is short for experience modifier or experience modification. It’s a rating that is used to adjust an employer’s premium for workers’ compensation.] So suddenly insurers really want to insure us.

FAB: Do you still use rewards of some type to reinforce safe behavior?

Shankles: We certainly offer positive recognition for people doing things safely. We give them free lunch cards and other small tokens of appreciation when a positive behavior is witnessed. These can be awarded to anyone, and anyone can suggest them as a reward for others in the facility.

We also reward team members for hitting benchmarks and for achieving positive results. We recently worked 6.5 million hours without a lost-time accident. Each time we would hit a million mark, we would give away a token, such as backpacks, shirts, jackets, lunchboxes, and coolers. Sometimes I feel like I’ve turned into a safety marketing person. You have to keep safety in front of your team!

We also use other items for rewards when team members participate. For example, we provide extra-nice personal protective equipment and gift cards. This may be for team members that are going the extra mile, such as identifying where additional safety measures could be implemented. When you reward folks, they have the incentive to be a part of the program, and the next thing you know you have people competing for those rewards.

Safety surveys each year are useful as well. We use them to determine what people think about safety in the shop and what their attitudes are. This way we can focus on areas that we know we are lacking in.

FAB: When you have new employees and contract workers come in, how is safety integrated into their orientation?

Shankles: We put a lot of emphasis on new-employee orientation, which lasts about five hours. This orientation also covers temporary employees and contractors; everybody gets the same basic orientation as a new hire. Contractors’ orientation is based on what job the contractor will be doing—trenching, excavation, electrical, or mechanical. It will be geared more towards these areas.

When I first started here, I asked employees what caused all of the injuries. Everybody always said it was the new employees. That was obviously an area to start with. That’s the reason I put new-employee orientation in place.

Now the statistics show it’s not the new employees putting people at risk. It’s the folks that have worked here usually between one and three years. Maybe as these people have been hired on as full-time employees, they let their guard down.

That’s kind of the focus for me now. How do we reach those individuals?

So we may go back and do a refresher on some health and safety basics.

FAB: Are you the sole person with the responsibility of leading the safety awareness initiatives?

Shankles: In the last three years we’ve really begun pushing this out to our team leaders and supervisors. We are pushing out training material and allowing the supervisors to review it with team members. It builds ownership with the supervisors.

FAB: Do you mix general safety topics, such as safety tips when working around the house, into your regular safety conversations at the shop?

Shankles: Yes. We do try to include topics about home safety. About 80 percent of the injuries that happen to people occur away from work. We do a pretty good job of keeping them safe at work. However, they may be trying more risky tasks at home, and we should focus on this. Unfortunately, this drives everyone’s health care costs up.

FAB: Do you think all the time and effort put into keeping PlayCore employees safe has created momentum to keep the initiative alive?

Shankles: I certainly believe that. Our company has acquired other, smaller companies involved in the play and recreation industry. We have companies that build products for swimming pool accessories, climbing walls, bicycle racks, indoor play, park amenities, and fitness equipment. Some of the purchased companies had safety programs already, and we are working to implement it into others that need assistance. We can build additional value for them with our safety program.

FAB: What do you take most pride in during your tenure at PlayCore?

Shankles: People don’t get hurt as much, and when injuries occur, they are not as severe as they used to be. It’s nice to see people going home safe.

Also, PlayCore is building a reputation in the community as being a good place to work. You don’t have to worry about being injured. The employees are showing a lot of buy-in when it comes to safety.

FAB: Do you have any advice for other companies looking to change their safety culture?

Shankles: Jump on board with health and safety and stick with it. It’s not something that is a once-and-done thing. It’s an everyday thing. It is continuous encouragement of your team to work safe.

One of the other things that really makes me happy is that our productivity has really grown throughout the years. Lean manufacturing has helped us to do that. But it’s also helped a great deal with health and safety because making jobs easier also makes folks not have to carry things or transport goods back and forth with wasteful movement.

If I were going to offer advice to other shops, I would encourage them to understand lean manufacturing. That will help your safety efforts.

PlayCore, www.playcore.com