SAFETY IN NUMBERS

By Natalie Bruckner

While considered one of the safest of the skilled trades out there, accidents in the sheet metal industry happen.

According to the latest Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (which considers the total number of incidents and the total hours worked by all employees within one year), the average incident rate in the sheet metal industry of 1.91 was the lowest reported rate in the lifespan of the survey.

But for SMART Locals and SMACNA contractors, that just won’t cut it. Together, they are on a mission to get to zero, or as close to that as possible.

One way they are doing that is by changing attitudes when it comes to safety. In the past, the construction industry has been prone to the blame game, because when something goes wrong, the finger tends to be pointed. However, a deep set of new research has shown that the name, blame, and shame game is both corrosive and counterproductive.

“As an industry, the sheet metal labor and management understand that we have to change with the times,” says Michael Mooney, president and business manager at Local 18 in Wisconsin. “If we want to be the industry of choice, we have to have one leg up on our competition. One area we can do that is in safety and how we communicate it. Safety is one topic where we truly unite. We all want people to go home safe at the end of the day.”

SMACNA Wisconsin contractor JF Ahern is not just raising the bar when it comes to safety training, but also setting a brand new standard in the approach. Explains Matt Van Der Puy, business representative at Local 18 who previously worked at Ahern, “They are way ahead of the curve.”

A little over a year ago, Ahern introduced a new interactive training initiative called Hidden Hazards. Its goal is to create an increased focus on preventing similar events from recurring and avoiding those incidents with a high potential to result in serious injuries and fatalities.

Unique in its approach, the team behind Hidden Hazards looked to Netflix (among other steaming services) for tips on how to draw viewers in. From there, they built a training series that included deep dive interviews with employees, live polling/ chat to ask questions and encourage further interactivity, and learning videos. This meant that when COVID hit, the training could proceed “business as usual.”

“Our philosophy at JF Ahern is about being systematic in everything we do, and that includes our safety programs,” explains Dustin Rusch, chief safety officer at Ahern. “Hidden Hazards came about as a result of a lot of learning and proactive data analysis from being in business for 140 years. We have always been keen on gaining more insights from incidents and really focusing on that learning.”

Ahern’s approach to safety investigation, which is where the program originated, is rather unique. “Before we start to investigate any safety incident we need to ‘event learn’ as investigations can be biased and often don’t dive deep enough,” Rusch says. “We find that a powerful learning experience begins with powerful insight that employees can relate to. With Hidden Hazards, we wanted to really capitalize on the storytelling aspect, as it can be an extremely powerful learning tool.”

Thus, the team at Ahern came up with a formula that would truly engage their employees and make them want to participate and watch one part after another. What they ended up with is a series that would quite happily sit on Hulu, Amazon Prime, or Netflix.

They started with a poll. The safety team reached out to its people to share their insights, and the response to each topic was (and continues to be) overwhelming. “For each poll, we get around 150 people sharing their experiences,” Rusch explains. “I think people want to share because we disarm the feeling of shame and blame that has been inherent with construction and safety, and we gain their trust that their experience will help others. While there’s absolutely a place for accountability, that can’t be at the sake of the learning opportunity.”

The team then compiled testimonials in video format or in audio files because, as Rusch says, this is where the storytelling happens. Once the background work has been completed, the team was ready to roll and release a trailer to act as the carrot to the full program.

Rusch explains the format from there: “We like our training to be a hosted event. We play a video clip that tees up the story and then shifts to in-person discussion that provides more context.”

The segment is followed by a live poll in Zoom asking if this has happened to participants, prompting experience sharing and encouraging interaction. Then facilitators get into the topic.

“This isn’t fluffy, off-the-shelf training,” Rusch says. “This is highly specific training that people can relate to. We then try to bridge each event to a training topic to accomplish the required training, whether that’s external or internal.”

After each episode, the team goes back to the drawing board to look at the metrics and consider whether it was good enough, content rich enough, and entertaining enough to make them want come back for more.

Justin Kressin, safety business partner at Ahern’s Northwest office and OSHA instructor, was heavily involved in building the program. He explains that the average attendance for Hidden Hazards is three times that of their other training courses. In fact, they have managed to deliver their virtual training series to 3,571 volunteer participants (as of August, 2021) in the midst of the pandemic.

“How safety is communicated can determine how effective it is,” Kressin explains. “At Ahern, we don’t train on what the regulations say, but how that regulation impacts you and how you do your work. It becomes very personal. Our goal is to give employees the knowledge to set them up to make the right decisions.”

It’s no wonder that JF Ahern recently received SMACNA’s 2021 Safety Innovation Award, an award that recognizes a company that demonstrates an innovative safety idea, concept, or best practice that improves its safety programming or culture.

With three more Hidden Hazards sessions planned for 2021, the team at Ahern is excited to see the response and to share its experiences with others. “We put ourselves under the gun when it comes to each topic, much like a newspaper would,” Rusch says. “We want to ensure we have the right topic, title, and story, and that we get readership/viewers. We are always keen to share our experiences with our peers as a best practice, and we love learning from others to really raise the bar of safety in the industry.”

Local 18’s Mooney speaks very highly of Ahern and its approach to safety: “JF Ahern is a very progressive contractor,” he says. “Learning from one another and what people are doing is essential to progress. By showing a unified front when it comes to safety, something that non-union companies aren’t particularly renowned for, we can stay one step ahead. Everybody wants to go home at the end of the day. Accidents happen, but by continually looking at innovative ways to minimize accidents and how we communicate safety, we can truly set an example.”▪

Natalie is an award-winning writer who has worked in the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, the United States, and Canada. She has more than 23 years experience as a journalist, editor, and brand builder, specializing in construction and transportation.