According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 2.7 million nonfatal workplace injuries were reported in the United States in 2014. Workplace injuries and illnesses pose a serious problem in many industries including construction and manufacturing as well as facilities maintenance. Many employees fear that if they report safety observations that it will impact their job security or reputation. However, that is false. Employees should be encouraged to report safety incidents to establish a culture of safety. WorkplaceAware, a mobile safety application and online dashboard, allows employees and managers to report, track and resolve any and all safety and operations issues in the workplace.

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2. f you saw a spill on the shop floor at
work, would you clean it up, report it to a
manager, or walk away and let someone
else worry about it? The first two options
are responsible choices, depending on
the situation. Ignoring a safety issue,
even if it does not cause any harm, still can put you and
your coworkers at risk. Employers of all sizes and around
the world face challenges with tracking safety issues in their
facilities and encouraging employees to speak up about
them. Safety can be improved in some smaller firms by fos-
tering an environment of open communication and teaching
employees to recognize safety hazards. For larger, global
companies, web-based software and mobile applications can
connect all of the affected parties and streamline reporting
and investigating procedures. The end goal in both scenarios
is to be able to address accidents and near misses in order to
create a safe working environment.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than
2.7 million nonfatal workplace injuries were reported in the
United States in 2014. In addition to the pain and potentially
reduced quality of life for the injured employees, the compa-
nies face costs from medical bills, property damage, workers’
compensation, overtime pay, fines, and litigation, notes Ken
Mazon, senior application specialist for WorkplaceAware, a
health and safety reporting solution. “Workers’ compensa-
tion claims alone average about $5,000,” he says. “Most [US
Occupational Health and Safety Administration] (OSHA)
fines are about $10,000, although some can total hundreds
of thousands of dollars.” OSHA estimates that US employ-
ers pay a combined $1 billion each week for direct workers’
compensation costs, in addition to the costs associated with
accident investigation, implementing corrective measures,
lost productivity, repairing damaged property, and training
replacement employees.
These results only consider the reported workplace
injuries. Michael Scaletta, Chicago-area general manager
for Equipment Depot, notes that employees at his company
sometimes are reluctant to mention a safety hazard or
accident that happened at a customer’s site. They fear that
reporting the incident will hurt the customer relationship.
However, 85 percent of the company’s injuries happen to
field techs at customer locations, where the company cannot
directly control the safety of its employees, he says.
The simple solution, Scaletta suggests, is to encourage
feedback and maintain a positive approach to gathering
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Photo:iStock/omendriveandzhudifeng
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By Jennifer Storelli
Technology encourages employees to promote facility safety

3. incident information. “I believe it really comes down
to communication and fostering an environment
that puts safety first above all other metrics,” he says.
“Companies also must make the employees aware that
they want to be transparent and that no one will ever
get in trouble for reporting an accident or possible
safety hazards.”
Putting safety first means encouraging employees
to report both accidents and near misses, or situa-
tions that have not yet caused any injuries but have
the potential to do so. In his five years as a warehouse
manager overseeing employee safety, Anthony Rera,
CPIM, CSCP, CLSSBB, director of communications
and marketing for the APICS Tappan Zee Chapter, has
noticed that employees neglect to report near misses
because they do not think they are worth mentioning.
However, according to the ConocoPhillips Marine
safety pyramid, for every 3,000 near misses or at-risk
behaviors in industrial facilities, approximately 300
recordable workplace injuries occur. (See Figure 1.) In
2003, the Houston-based business conducted a study
building on the 1931 work of H.W. Heinrich to demon-
strate the ratio between near misses and serious acci-
dents, according to OSHA. Such near misses, which
included bypassing safety components on machinery
or eliminating a safety step in the production process,
are clearly worth talking about.
Rera recalls a specific near miss involving a truck driver
and a forklift operator at a company warehouse. In that
case, the driver thought the loading process was complete
and disengaged the dock plate, triggering an all-clear
green light on the dock and a red light in the warehouse.
However, the forklift operator loading the truck was still
inside the warehouse retrieving the last pallet. When he
returned to the dock, he reengaged the dock plate to load
his pallet onto the truck, triggering the dock light to turn
red and indicate to the driver he should not leave yet.
However, the truck driver did not notice the light change
and drove away with the forklift and its operator in his
trailer. Fortunately, nobody was hurt in this instance, but
the potential for danger was there.
Because the incident was brought to management’s
attention, the company was able to conduct an investi-
gation and add more safety measures, such as installing
a dock-locking system and collecting keys from drivers
who back into the loading dock. If the situation had not
been reported, “the bigger risk [would have been] not
finding and fixing the cause of the incident,” Rera says.
Chris Gab, engineering manager at plastic pallet
and container manufacturer Rehrig Pacific’s De Soto,
Kansas facility, echoes the importance of examining
near misses. “We never see a near miss as a negative,”
he explains. “It’s an opportunity to make an improve-
ment before anything serious occurs. If we analyze
our near misses, they can point to gaps in our safety
processes or training. Dealing with an accident where
employees are injured or equipment is damaged is far
less productive than near-miss corrections.”
Technological advantages
Rehrig Pacific sets the stage for safety at its De Soto,
Kansas, facility with a comprehensive employee safety
training program that includes classroom and pres-
entation events, five-minute trainings called “Toolbox
Talks,” quizzes, task or process audits, and job-hazard
analyses. After more than 10 years of exceptional
safety performance, plant managers realized that, if
they wanted to maintain that record, they would have
to focus on continuous improvement of the company’s
safety culture, Gab says. In addition to accidents, the
plant managers wanted to track near misses, which
are leading indicators of safety improvement opportu-
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program depends on the
attitude of management.
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4. nities, he says. However, the company’s paper reports
and limited computerized forms were not equipped to
handle that, he explains.
“Those doing the work are the foremost experts in
how the work is done and the risks in that work,” Gab
says. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if a third-shift
operator could text in a picture of an issue beyond his
control to remedy?’”
Rehrig Pacific found this solution in
WorkplaceAware, a health and safety reporting
tool for computers and mobile devices. With the
WorkplaceAware mobile app, workers using Apple or
Android smartphones or tablets can submit a report
that includes specific details about the near miss or
incident, a picture, the time and date it was discovered,
and the location of the issue, WorkplaceAware’s Mazon
explains. Users also can view past reports they have
submitted and receive updates about them.
WorkplaceAware has helped increase near-miss
reporting in Rehrig Pacific’s De Soto plant, Gab says.
“Our associates have varying levels of comfort with
written communication, and, especially in a man-
ufacturing plant, they may not know the names of
equipment or be able to completely describe what they
see,” he explains. “Pictures are more powerful than any
description … Plus, it may take a few minutes to fill
out a form, whereas the WorkplaceAware app enables
report submission in seconds.”
Whistle-blowing fears
Even when companies work to foster an environment
of openness and concern for safety, some employees
still might be afraid to blow the whistle. In a survey of
3,000 UK employees, London-based law firm Slater and
Gordon found that 1 in 10 people had suffered a serious
injury at work, and 30 percent of those injured said
they were blamed for the incident. Another 10 percent
of those injured were warned their jobs would be at risk
if they continued to report safety concerns.
Based on situations such as this, one-third of British
workers are afraid to reveal illegal or dangerous activ-
ities at their companies, according to another Slater
and Gordon survey of 2,000 UK employees. However,
67 percent of those surveyed reported that they would
speak up if they could do so anonymously.
The team at Philadelphia-based Transportation
Resource Associates (TRA), which primarily offers
guidance about complex safety, security, opera-
tions, and maintenance issues in the transportation
sector, kept anonymity in mind when designing its
IndustrySafe Safety Management Software. “As long
as an employee has internet access, he or she can use
IndustrySafe’s public web forms to report workplace
incidents that they witness, record observations, and
report any hazards they may encounter,” explains
Clare Epstein, a TRA vice president. “Our public web
forms can be made available to an entire company via
Figure 1: ConocoPhillips Marine Safety Pyramid, 2003
1
Fatality
30
Lost workday cases
300
Recordable injuries
3,000
Near misses (estimated)
30,000
At-risk behaviors (estimated)
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5. Apparel factory workers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, learn to use the LaborVoices platform.
a simple web link, so no … username or password is
required to use our public forms. Companies can even
allow employees to report their findings anonymously
via the public forms, if they wish to do so.”
Similarly, LaborVoices offers an anonymous griev-
ance hotline through which employees can talk about
their safety concerns. LaborVoices forwards general
issue information to the individual’s employer or
other stakeholders, but specific employee information
is shared only if the employee allows it. “If there’s a
specific case that needs to be dealt with, and someone
wants to follow up, we take extra care to make sure the
worker knows that he or she has to opt in to get that
direct communication,” explains Kohl Gill, CEO and
founder of the Sunnyvale, California-based company.
However, persuading employees to contact a third-
party system has required some trust-building, Gill
notes. LaborVoices shares information about its ser-
vices with working communities in the United States,
United Kingdom, Turkey, Bangladesh, Dominican
Republic, Argentina, Costa Rica, India, and China and
encourages them to interact with its call-in system
to participate in employee surveys and listen to labor
information through its infocast tool.
“You can think of it as a lower-temperature inter-
action,” Gill explains. “We’re not looking to interact
with workers only when things are really urgent. …
We’re aiming our interaction with workers at a little
bit more of a casual stance, where workers can call at
any time … for any issue … We found that that is very
useful because it allows the workers to gradually build
up a relationship with us as a system and company that
allows them to surface issues that normally would be
very difficult to talk about.”
Traversing language and distance
The talking aspect of LaborVoices enables workers
who are uncomfortable with writing to still give a
report and voice their concerns, Gill points out. “The
way we’ve built our interface for workers has, up until
now, been entirely audio,” he says. “So, we’re aiming
for workers who don’t necessarily have a smartphone
[and] they aren’t necessarily literate, or at least not in
a Western language, and so it makes sense to interact
with them via audio.”
This feature was actually one of the reasons why
Reliable Source Industrial (RSI) chose the system.
“[One of] our goals in implementing the LaborVoices
platform [was to] help design and implement a local
language grievance hotline so that our local employees
can immediately provide feedback or ‘raise a red flag’
if there was a concern at the factory operations level
that was against our strict internal code of conduct or
not in total compliance with our core values,” explains
Ted Leung, chief compliance officer for the Taipei,
Taiwan-based apparel manufacturer. The company has
close to 10,000 employees in Shanghai; Phnom Penh,
Cambodia; Chittagong, Bangladesh; Hanoi, Vietnam;
and Jakarta, Indonesia.
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6. Digital Exclusive: Visit the APICS magazine tablet app for an
infographic about workplace safety. To access the digital exclusives,
search for “APICS mag” in the App Store and on Google play.
In one of the first surveys through LaborVoices,
RSI employees voiced concerns about the sanitation
of the company-provided midday meal, and managers
were able to quickly address the issue through local
factory team meetings. “Immediately thereafter, our
local factory management team began the process of
investigating and conducting a root-cause analysis of
the employee feedback and learned that our third-party
foodservice company providing our midday meal had
been lax in its hygiene and food-safety-handling proce-
dures,” Leung explains.
“Our local health and safety manager worked with
the owners of the foodservice company to upgrade and
strengthen the company’s standard operating proce-
dures and provide additional training to strengthen
and reinforce safety protocols,” Leung says. In turn, the
local team began inspecting midday meals and made
unannounced audits at the foodservice company’s
facilities to review handling, preparation, cooking,
and transport procedures. Lastly, RSI followed up
with employees to provide feedback and monitor the
progress of changes.
These actions showed employees that their feedback
and concerns were being taken seriously, Leung says.
In addition, because the LaborVoices system ensured
employee confidentiality but enabled them to receive
feedback through general company meetings, and
because the company openly encouraged employees to
continue providing feedback, participation in the sys-
tem increased. “We have noticed that a trust is being
developed with our employees and they are more
open and willing to provide feedback and suggestions
for improvement.”
RSI’s example of trust-building and encouraging
safety feedback can be applied to many other labor
situations. The success of any safety program depends
on the attitude of management, Equipment Depot’s
Scaletta notes. “I believe that companies can encour-
age employees to speak up about such issues through
transparency and leadership from the top of the com-
pany,” he says. “Once employees know the company is
committed to safety and making sure all employees go
home safe at the end of the day, they will speak up.”
Jennifer Storelli is associate editor for APICS magazine. She
may be contacted at editorial@apics.org.
To comment on this article, send a message to feedback@apics.org.
THE SAFE ROUTE FOR TRUCKERS
Because truck drivers face multiple
uncontrollable hazards on the roads
every day, safety must be top of
mind for every fleet. “Truck drivers
must drive not only for themselves,
but also for others on the highway,”
explains Joe L. Smith, manager of
fleet safety and risk management
at Kenco Management Services in
Chattanooga, Tennessee. “They must
be alert and anticipate erratic maneu-
vers by other drivers who are talking
on cell phones, texting, listening to
loud music, reading while driving,
talking to others in the car, and being
oblivious to those driving around
them—particularly large trucks.”
An accident on an interstate can cost
millions of dollars in lost productivity
in addition to the associated investi-
gative, cleanup, insurance, legal, and
reputation costs. “Even though a truck
driver may not be at fault in some of the
crashes that occur from other drivers’
negligence, early news reports are
often incomplete, and people are quick
to blame the largest vehicle involved,”
Smith says.
To prevent accidents in the first place,
the trucking industry uses multiple
forms of safety technology. Lane-
departure warning systems, collision
mitigation systems, adaptive cruise
control, vehicle stability systems, and
rear- and side-collision warning sys-
tems are commonly used to help truck
drivers work safely, says Jacob Pierce,
deputy executive officer of safety pro-
grams for the Arlington, Virginia-based
American Trucking Associations’ (ATA’s)
Safety Management Council. Kenco
also uses a SmartDrive camera system
with outward- and inward-facing cam-
eras in all on-the-road trucks to capture
hazardous situations and coach drivers
to correct unsafe driving behaviors.
In addition, Kenco requires all drivers
to watch a JJ Keller & Associates
online, interactive training video on a
monthly basis. “Providing the very best
possible training for drivers and their
supervisors is always the first line of
safety,” Smith says. Annual recogni-
tion programs, whether fleet-based or
nationwide, encourage continued safe
practices, he adds.
Because of its safety record, Kenco
earned the 2015 ATA President’s Trophy
in the Under 25 Million Miles category,
as well as first place in the National
Truck Safety Contest in the General
Commodities/Truckload/Line-Haul up
to 10 Million Miles category, the Safety
Improvement Award, and the Division
Improvement Award. “Kenco showed
that safety and health performance
is of the utmost importance,” Pierce
says of Kenco’s achievements. “Their
current training programs are designed
to teach, motivate, and sustain safety
knowledge practices amongst all of
their employees.”
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