Think twice! Dumb decisions can have serious

THINK TWICE!

A spur of the moment dumb decision can have serious consequences, says Sam Tyson.

One of our apprentices had finished his work and had a half hour to spare before going home.

He went out back into our workshop looking for something to do and saw that one of our tradespeople had loaded up their van for tomorrow and was about to head off to one of our merchants to grab some more gear.

Another apprentice was already in the passenger seat, so he decided to jump into the back of the van and go along for the ride without a seat or seatbelt.

When they got to the merchants, the two in the front told the apprentice to lie down so he wouldn’t be seen. Another one of our tradespeople turned up with some gear belonging to the passenger apprentice and thought he would chuck it into the back of the van. On lifting the back door, he discovered the freeriding apprentice hiding in the back.

It was reported to our operations manager, who in turn let me know. Our operations manager, normally a cool, calm, and collected kind of guy, was fuming and so was I. By this time, it was 6pm so we decided to sleep on it and talk to them in the morning.

Overnight I came up with a bit of a plan. Generally, on a Friday morning, our operations manager has a 90-minute training session with our apprentices. My plan was to take them through an incident report, using this incident as an example. Rather than tell them off in the first instance, get them to realise how serious it could have been, and turn it into a lesson.

We met in my office and used my computer to fill out the report. We told all the apprentices we were going to do a health and safety session on incident reporting and use an actual incident that had happened yesterday.

You could see they were curious to find out about the incident. As I started populating the form in front of them with what type of incident it was (safety violation), what happened, where it happened and who was involved, the penny started dropping for the two apprentices involved.

When we started listing the hazards and the harms, you could see them starting to understand the seriousness of the situation. If the driver had braked, the apprentice could have been hit with flying objects. If there had been an accident, he could have been seriously hurt, possibly killed.

The Police and WorkSafe would have been involved, which could have led to hefty fines, our business reputation ruined, and the security of 35 people’s jobs put in jeopardy.

Once we had completed the report we paused and let the other apprentices leave while we then turned our lesson into a disciplinary meeting. They were both pretty embarrassed about what had happened and clearly understood how a spur of the moment dumb decision could have had serious consequences.

The freeriding apprentice was issued with a safety violation written warning, as was the driver after a separate meeting. The other apprentice, who had the previous week told us he wanted to be a leader in our industry, was told he was going about it the wrong way, and we also discussed the seriousness of the incident at our next toolbox meeting.

An apprentice’s decision to freeride in the back of a van could have had serious consequences for him and the business. About the author: Sam Tyson has been Managing Director of Climate & Plumbing since 2010. She is an active member in the industry and, with a background in strategic business development, shares the knowledge and experience gained from her award-winning business to help others obtain better results in their businesses. Sam is a Director on the national Master Plumbers Board.