Safety Doesn't Happen By Accident

This post is inspired by our local fast food joint. I'm self-diagnosed ADD and I do my best work in noisy settings like a cafe or local coffee place instead of the confines of my home office. Well, I'm at our local fast food joint and I see their worker pull out a mop bucket with some sort of cold water solution and proceeds to mop in front of me. Picture this... he doesn't set up a wet floor sign. His mop bucket lacked any warning sign or symbols. He's using the mop all wrong by pushing the mop in a forward and backward motion, and, combined with any residual grease, the floor became very slippery. With an average age above the Bell curve, there were some customers slipping around, though thankfully nothing happened.

His actions inspired this post. When you point at someone, three other fingers on your hand are pointing right back at you. This post is a reflection of what happened to us over the years, and the lessons learned.

Before I dive in, know that safety is a top priority. In recent years we held quarterly safety sessions led both by management and by every level of employee. I held a Train the Trainer certification through CMI and some of our employees went through OSHA training through OSHA10 and OSHA30. All of our employees went through biohazard training and chemical hazards training utilizing different platforms. We also fostered commentary by our facilities managers who saw our workers firsthand and encouraged them to say something if they saw any elevated risk to safety. 

We focused on 4 key areas:

Policies and Procedures

Safety is written into our SOPs and paperwork. We encourage all employees to speak up if we need to amend or processes. We've even encouraged our employees to cease working if they feel there's a safety issue, cleaning-related or not. Our philosophy is that we'd rather face an angry client because we didn't complete a task than face an angry relative because their loved-one was injured or worse.

Risk Assessments and Prevention

We're always doing assessments. We ask those "what if" questions and remain vigilantly proactive. We also keep our SDS binders active and current at each client location. We also encourage our clients to say something if they see a safety issue. If something does happen, we have written procedures in place to best handle the situation.

Communication and Leadership

Our company always holds safety briefings covering any potential blindspots and we actively encourage our crews to point out any gaps in safety. We also celebrate any acknowledgment of any safety deficiency and talk about those "what ifs" had they happened.

Trainings

We promote ongoing training on topics of safety and always pursue certifications not just for management, but for all levels of employees. We encourage the pursuit of knowledge and offer paid time for any training, including safety. 

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While we only had 2 Workers Comp claims in the last 20 years (one was later proven to be a false claim), it wasn't always sunshine and rainbows. The purpose of this post is to air our sins and hopefully you can use this as a cautionary tale so it doesn't happen to you too.

If A CLIENT'S VICE-PRESIDENT FALLS ON THE FLOOR.....

....would anyone hear her? Sigh. We had a subcontractor, who we were ultimately responsive for, who worked late one evening at an office building. The penthouse floor belonged to a property management company, who was our client that managed that entire building. On that top floor they had a cafeteria. The entire suite was about 12,000 sqft and at midnight, there was nobody to be seen. So, our sub began mopping the floor without setting up any wet floor signs. She didn't realize that our client's VP was burning the midnight oil. That VP walked into that cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee and she slipped on the wet floor, injuring herself and eventually went to the hospital. Lesson #1 learned: Never assume that you're alone.

ALWAYS FOLLOW THE PLAN

We had an employee who used bleach at a school client location. We later banned all bleach from all locations, partly due to this incident. Our employee worked for our client for 8 hours and then worked for us for 8 hours. We couldn't fire our employee as they loved him, and having him work 2 shifts at the same location did provide for some unique challenges. Anyway, he did his normal janitorial as planned but decided to knock off early to go home. His last unleft task? Mopping and he planned to mop with bleach and water. How do we know? Because he created the mop-bleach solution and left it in the mop bucket overnight with the intent to mop first thing in the AM. However, he didn't do that. The odor from the bleach wafted into the hallways and the next morning kids and staff were complaining of burning nose and eyes with some classrooms relocating elsewhere. The culprit was in his mop bucket. We dodged a bullet here as the school insisted they were to blame for this but we felt otherwise. Lesson #2 learned: There's never a good reason to leave out unused solution (and dump the bleach).

ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAN

One of our clients was a private school. This school comprised of several buildings on multiple acres. One of the buildings had 2 levels, with elevator access. I set that up because we were also in charge of refilling consumables, like toilet paper and paper towels. Anyway our employee was carrying a 96 roll case of toilet paper to a downstairs restroom in lieu of taking an elevator. This employee's ankle rolled after missing the very last step. There was a pop and that led to an ER visit and eventually a Workers Comp claim. This employee was awarded about 9 months of missed pay, plus medical, but the case was eventually partially overturned. I have no doubt there could have been an injury. I've had my fair share of missteps. Lesson #3 learned: Encourage safer alternatives, like an elevator.  

THE GOVERNMENT DOESN'T KNOW EVERYTHING

How could they? It's the early days of COVID. That summer of 2020 was eventful. We had been disinfecting for years leading up to coronavirus with pathogens like MRSA, norovirus, flu outbreaks, and more. But this was different because we were learning about transmission methods, hand washing, and proper use of facemasks. It was the Wild West and all we knew at that moment was that it was airborne and our clients were afraid to touch anything. So we did a lot of disinfecting. Most of it was standard touchpoint disinfecting. Nothing big. But we had a client who wanted electrostatic disinfecting, and we had some new devices to boot. So we used a List N disinfectant in our electrostatic device. This was before the EPA published any article about delivery methods. The research hadn't been done yet. After all, the virus was new. But when you spritz out disinfectant from a trigger spray bottle, the yield is much different than an electrostatic sprayer where the molecules are much smaller. Smaller molecules of disinfectant means it's absorbed much more easily. This is what happened when a client walked into our area while we disinfected the place, despite our adamant insistence that she needs to keep away and her refusal to upgrade her mask with one of ours. Disinfectant absorbed into her skin and lungs which triggered an asthmatic episode and landed her in the hospital.  Lesson #4 learned: Just because there are no warnings to use a product a certain way, it doesn't mean that you should. 

SAFETY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

Well...literally. Over 20 years ago, we had an employee who was tasked by our school client to clean some exterior windows. She had with her a cloth and ammonia glass cleaner. She sprayed that towards a window...against the wind. That wind drove the glass cleaner back to her and into her eyes. She was blinded by the spray and made her way inside to the school's nurse. That nurse called us and asked for the SDS. We always had that on the ready and within a minute of the call, she had a copy of that SDS in her hand and applied appropriate first aid. First aid was rendered and she told our employee to go to the ER to get checked out. A ride was provided for her and instead of going to the ER, she went home and took the rest of the day off. In the end she refused further treatment, she was ok, and returned to work the next day. Lesson #5 learned: Always assume SDS sheets are needed and never do an uncontrolled spray.

DON'T BE A PRICK

This one gets me and it wasn't our fault, though we made procedural changes because of it. This was around 2000. We had a building and one of the tenants was a general medical practice. That tenant had a subtenant who was a phlebotomist (someone who draws blood and other fluids for testing). That phlebotomist would draw blood and toss the used needles in the trash. We didn't know this until our employee got pricked. We pulled the trash bag and goes to tie it up. As he pulled it out of the can the weighted inertia caused the bad to swing at his leg. There was an exposed needle popping through. He was in shock when he saw a needle in there and in even more shock when he realized his leg was bleeding. He called us. We called our client (the landlord) and that client called the medical practice. That medical practice said it wasn't their problem and suggested our employee file a workers comp claim. Well, the landlord sided with us and pressed the issue. Apparently subtenancies weren't allowed on that lease and that medical practice called the phlebotomist. That phlebotomist told the tenant that all of her patients that day were HIV+ positive patients. That got relayed to everyone and panic ensued. In the end, the medical practice paid for rejection drugs and our employee began treatment immediate. When all was said and done our employee was ok, and there never was any sign of infection. Lesson #6 learned: Don't assume the trash is safe; it could one-day alter your life.

Well, I have a lot more to share, but I'll stop here. I hope this helps someone. Things will happen. You can't stop that. But you can learn from your experiences and take steps to make sure they never happen again.

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Next on Deck: Winning Through Marketing - Networking (5/29/24)