{"id":1710,"date":"2014-10-21T22:00:25","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T22:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/?p=1710"},"modified":"2014-10-21T22:08:59","modified_gmt":"2014-10-21T22:08:59","slug":"walking-floor-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/safety-planning\/walking-floor-safety\/","title":{"rendered":"Walking the Floor for Safety"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"safety-walk\"<\/a>Walking the Floor for Safety<\/span><\/h1>\n

Walking the floor by a manager is a critical part of understanding what is truly going on at your facility.\u00a0 Getting out of the office and onto the floor allows you a firsthand look at how things are going.\u00a0\u00a0 If a manager only<\/em> goes out on the floor when there is trouble, then employees will assume, when they see management, there is something wrong.\u00a0 For example, many of our client\u2019s employees believe when they see an HR manager on site, someone is losing their job.\u00a0 Daily walks are also used in programs such as Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma.<\/p>\n

A daily safety walk could be compared to a Gemba Walk which is used to monitor production. \u00a0A Gemba Walk is a daily, scheduled walk where the manager in a facility is out on the shop floor and publicly reviews the shop’s performance and metrics as displayed on visual metric boards. The manager walks through the shop, stopping at each visual metric board to review the current results. A lower-level manager (or better yet, an hourly associate) presents the data to the manager, who can then praise good performance and ask questions about problems which prevented good performance. The manager can also give direction and suggestions to the operating associates.<\/p>\n

The Gemba Walk is a proactive, non-threatening and quick process. The total time spent at any one visual metric board should not exceed 15 minutes and typically should not be more than 5 \u2013 10 minutes. If there are issues that need further discussion and review, then other, more traditional systems such as production meetings should be used.<\/p>\n

You can use this same \u201cGemba Walk\u201d approach to safety.\u00a0 Walking the floor for a short time to focus on safety will give the manager a \u201chands on, proactive\u201d approach.\u00a0 Gemba Walks are often done in a “layered” manner. At the lowest layer, the Department Manager does a daily walk, the Site-wide Operations Manager would do a weekly walk, and the Division Leader would follow the same Gemba Walk process monthly.\u00a0 Reports on the walks can be submitted and shared with employees at monthly safety meetings.\u00a0 Managers can be given different topics to focus on or talk about with employees.\u00a0 Topics may include behavior based safety or regulatory topics such as Lockout Tagout.\u00a0 Asking employees open ended questions is a great way to get conversations started.<\/p>\n

Whether for production metrics or safety, Gemba Walk reviews are done publicly. Everybody sees that operations are measured and all levels of management are interested in the results of those measures. \u00a0Anyone may ask a question or offer information. The only caveat is that the total time at any one station should not exceed 15 minutes. No matter who is present, a Gemba Walk is not meant to be long and drawn out.<\/p>\n

Here is an example where walking the floor was beneficial in preventing future injuries.<\/p>\n

I was walking the floor at my steel fabrication facility.\u00a0 As the Safety manager, I walk the floor several times a day.\u00a0 On this particular day, I was walking the afternoon shift.\u00a0 This facility had work cells where employees would work on fabricating and assembling large pieces of steel.\u00a0 As I was walking, I would observe employees working, check on regulatory items and stop to chat with employees.\u00a0 As I was getting ready to proceed to another building, I heard something and out of the corner of my eye I noticed something flying through the air.\u00a0 I turned to see what was going on, I saw a 2 lb hammer had broken and two parts were flying in opposite directions.\u00a0 The employee looked around to see if anyone noticed.\u00a0 He saw me and knew that I had seen the incident. I looked at the employee who nodded in acknowledging that we were about to have a discussion.<\/em><\/p>\n

When I got to the employees work station, I could see the 2 lb hammer was broken where the hammer handle attaches to the steel head.\u00a0 The employee was embarrassed however he was not apprehensive to speak with me because he sees me often.\u00a0 I asked the employee what happened.\u00a0 He said he was trying to line up a piece of steel so he could weld it to another piece.\u00a0 He said he used the hammer to \u201cpersuade\u201d one piece of metal into the correct position.\u00a0 We continued to talk about the incident.\u00a0 Before I left, I asked the employee to complete a \u201cnear miss\u201d report and to think about a better way to \u201cpersuade\u201d the two pieces of metal.<\/em><\/p>\n

The next day, I discussed the incident with the first shift employee who does the same fabrication work.\u00a0 He said he does not use a hammer to persuade the material, he uses clamps.\u00a0 I asked why he thought the incident happened on second shift and he replied the employee was probably not shown the clamp technique.<\/em><\/p>\n

I followed up with the second shift employee that afternoon.\u00a0 He was excited to show me he thought of a better way and he came up with the idea of using clamps.\u00a0 This was confirmed when he talked with the first shift employee that day.\u00a0 I worked with the production supervisor to ensure this technique was shared and the proper training and procedures were in place to prevent this type of incident from happening in the future.<\/em><\/p>\n

By walking the floor, a non-confrontational relationship was developed with the safety manager and the employees.\u00a0 In this instance, while follow-up was a critical component, the initial floor walk allowed observation, discussion, obtaining of ownership and communication of findings of an incident that most likely would have gone unreported.\u00a0 Don\u2019t think of these walks as taking time out of your busy day, instead incorporate them as an important part of each day in order to show employees safety is important.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Walking the Floor for Safety Walking the floor by a manager is a critical part of understanding what is truly going on at your facility.\u00a0 Getting out of the office and onto the floor allows you a firsthand look at how things are going.\u00a0\u00a0 If a manager only goes out on the floor when there is trouble, then employees will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[116,115,117],"class_list":["post-1710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-safety-planning","tag-safety-checks","tag-walking-the-floor-for-safety","tag-walking-the-job-site-for-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1710"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1715,"href":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710\/revisions\/1715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allrisktraining.com\/allrisktraining\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}