Safe, Efficient, Profitable: A Worker Safety Podcast
Joe and Jen Allen of Allen Safety LLC take their combined 40+ years of worker safety, OSHA, EPA, production, sanitation, and engineering experience in Manufacturing Plants including Harvest Plants/Packers, Case Readies and Further Processing Plants, Food Production Plants, Feed Mills, Grain Elevators, Bakeries, Farms, Feed Lots, and Petro-Chemical and bring you their top methods for identifying risk, preventing injuries, conquering the workload, auditing, managing emergencies and catastrophic events, and working through OSHA citations. They're breaking down real safety opportunities, safety citations, and emergency situations from real locations, and discussing realistic solutions that can actually be implement based on their personal experiences spending 40+ weeks in the field every year since 2001. Joe and Jen are using all of that experience to provide a fresh outlook on worker safety by providing honest, (no sponsors here!) and straight forward, easy to understand safety coaching with actionable guidance to move your safety program forward in a way that provides tangible results.
Safe, Efficient, Profitable: A Worker Safety Podcast
2024 Safety Wrap-Up: Top Safety Failures, Trends & Solutions
Join us for this 2024 worker safety trend wrap-up, where we're discussing the top worker safety gaps and opportunities we personally saw ourselves in the field as safety experts. Is this reviewing OSHA's list from Sept 2024? No. Is what we're listing possibly some of the root causes for why OSHA issued the citations they did? Maybe. Stick with us until the end to see the actionable, budget conscious safety strategies for 2025 and let us know if we missed any that you saw! Full episode description below:
Key Points:
OSHA 2024 Most-Cited Issues- this video isn't covering that list released in Sept 2024 due to that can be looked up, but the gaps we saw likely contributed to system breakdowns that resulting in the citations they ended up issuing.
1. Significant Procedure gaps were seen in confined space assessments, lock out tag out procedures, PPE assessments, SOPs, task procedures etc.
2. Stakeholder Involvement and Documentation- Importance of engaging qualified stakeholders for accurate hazard evaluation, program and procedure development, and overall program engagement.
3. Critical Technical Experience-Based Knowledge Was Lost to Turn Over & Retirement- Addressing the loss of knowledge due to retirements and high turnover rates.
4. Risks in Non-Routine Tasks, Team Members in Support Roles, and Multi-Employer Worksites-
Identifying overlooked hazards in tasks performed during off-hours or by contractors and support roles at the facility.
5. Technological Advances and Safety Challenges- Integrating robotics, AI, and advanced systems into safety protocols- implementation of new technology prior to the development of safety protocols and program updates.
Resources:
Visit AllenSafety.com for in-depth audits, evaluations, and training.
Explore AllenSafetyCoaching.com for over 100 videos, free email coaching, and step-by-step safety guidance.
This video is intended for educational purposes. Solutions offered are not designed to take the place of an attorney or medical professional, and should not be taken as legal or medical advice. It is recommended that viewers consult a safety consultant, medical provider or an occupational safety legal team as applicable to help navigate their specific circumstances.
Oh, this is 2024 trends in worker safety, so I think Top five. Top five. So I think OSHA put out something around September of 2024. This is not that. So this is what we have specifically seen and what we kind of think might be contributing factors to what OSHA put out, which was their most cited. So here we go, let's go.
Speaker 2:Here we go.
Speaker 1:All right, welcome back. Go, let's go there, we go. All right, welcome back. It's 2025, it's january and we thought, you know what a great that we could do would be to just do a recap let's do some risk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, here we go. Number one risk we saw bar none needers absolutely lockout, you name it.
Speaker 1:It's my response, don't matter whatever that is, it's like we have a piece of paper, but who validated it?
Speaker 2:who created it?
Speaker 1:it's not accurate. We don't know who created it. The person who created it and reviewed it. It didn't have a clue what was going on. We didn't have the right people involved, not the correct stakeholders helping guide us in that creation is like we have this document, we check the block but it means nothing and we can't use it for anything did you do the annual lockout verification?
Speaker 2:yes, how'd you do it?
Speaker 1:I dated it intern, an intern who's never worked in this industry before it.
Speaker 2:It's something like that you got to have people who know the operation of that equipment and what it really can do. Be the one to help with these. Even if we write procedures, we don't do it by ourselves.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. So hang in there. We gave you just a real quick one, but we're going to give all of our solutions at the end.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:We're not just going to leave you kind of wondering like, okay, that uh. We're not just going to leave you kind of wondering like, okay, that's great, what do we do about it? What's, what's your big idea?
Speaker 2:we'll give them at the end so here we go, so we're going to run through these, and there's some that'll reference each other, because they just do they do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they tie in.
Speaker 2:Some of them do tie in, yes, any normal job that not really normal, like outside the building, the tractor running a lawnmower.
Speaker 1:So we have production and then we have all the support.
Speaker 2:Clearing out snow on the driveway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have a lot of support functions that go into it. So when I'm thinking like wastewater, rendering truck, wash truck shop.
Speaker 2:Somebody changing out trash cans maybe?
Speaker 1:Yeah, maintenance of the outside grounds.
Speaker 2:That's right. Some plants literally have an outside cruise. That's all they do.
Speaker 1:We have a phenomenal job of maybe onboarding production folks. We have nothing and no procedures.
Speaker 2:No training.
Speaker 1:No list of things that they do. We haven't evaluated them in any way for hazards or PPE.
Speaker 2:really, oh, we did a tornado drill. What about those people?
Speaker 1:We forgot to count those people.
Speaker 2:They got to go somewhere. If they're way over there, where are they going to go account? They got to go somewhere. If they're way over there, where are they gonna go?
Speaker 1:yeah, it can't just be going the hallway here at the plant. And this gets particularly interesting when we have multi-employer work sites or we have several groups, maybe kind of sharing a building, or we're not really sure. Is that a part of our company? Well, not really. Well, that's a different llc over there, or get over.
Speaker 2:This is my spot. Yeah, I need to take shelter yeah, so there's there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that can get like who is really checking on those people if we've got multiple llcs in one area.
Speaker 2:So that's what happens. We always see that one person that seems to be down the hall doing something. You find out a few days later oh, that's a contractor. Because you don't think about it.
Speaker 1:They're not employed by us.
Speaker 2:But there's no manager there, there's nobody managing them, or they actually are employed.
Speaker 1:So security, sometimes it's ours.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Sanitation, sometimes it is Sometimes one year. It is one year, it isn't, or sometimes it's both.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we have folks doing specific job tasks that might be classified as sanitation, but they're actually employed by us on day shift.
Speaker 2:That's correct. So that's the normal jobs, but the one-offs a little.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so think about the entire property and checking on some of those support.
Speaker 2:We lost a lot of knowledge when it came to the turnover and the people retiring and we didn't capture all the data yeah I'm gonna change tires on this piece of equipment. Go to a place. Say who did it. Fred did. Fred worked there for 30 years. Where's fred? Now he retired? Who do you train to change out the tires?
Speaker 1:right, so we don't anybody that's coming to us. We're all thinking when we hire an individual oh, they've got knowledge they know like I'm hiring for a safety role, actually actively hiring right now, and I'm getting a whole flood of folks coming to me and they have safety backgrounds, but not in food.
Speaker 2:And not for the job we're looking for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and not specifically. You know, got the list of things worked in a food plant extra years, sanitation, PSM, understand refrigeration, understand all of the detailed and the technical things that are required from the ag side, the farm side.
Speaker 2:If you're a safety manager and your job is to write confined space for a mill and you never wrote confined space and been part of it, how can you write it? How can you be the manager of it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think the biggest thing here is just understanding that we need to reevaluate what our onboarding options are and what that looks like, because no one's there 30 years now and gets promoted through the rank.
Speaker 2:We hire them at that level now.
Speaker 1:Lots of gaps, Lots of gaps of every two, three years. We're having some turnover in some of these management roles.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And the folks that are coming to us have never worked in the industry before it takes them six to eight months to learn that part.
Speaker 2:Then you got an annual review lockout in the next year and by the third year they're gone.
Speaker 1:Well, and I guess my thing is, is that if the folks that are stepping into some of those roles don't understand the equipment, don't understand the cycle, don't understand some of the PMs and the non-routines, and the sanitation and how we have to do some of the specific jobs. There's a lot of risk that's going unchecked there, correct, and now you compile that with oh, we may have all of our managers have under a year at this facility, under a year within this industry, under a year, all of my operators for refrigeration.
Speaker 2:Are we in a place that had three or four months, nobody knows, or none? We've had some places with no operators. Now, yeah, I mean, we all contract it now like every five years is a pha.
Speaker 1:No one was there for the last, no one was there for the last compliance audit or the last mechanical integrity or some of these, these periodic things. So absolutely, we need to maybe look at some baseline information and got to change your, change your onboarding a little yeah, just check and validate we're all, at least on this specific page, before we move forward one and third shift.
Speaker 2:So third shift and the off days like sunday.
Speaker 1:We always do this, but no one's ever there to see us always do that yeah, so we have on routine tasks that we do and now not normal hours maybe it's not my regular day shift manager who has the most oh, let's put a new hire on these shifts yeah, so we've got new, new managers managing it.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And we're not always the best. This kind of ties into number one about the procedure part. And so, because we don't have the, this is the most efficient, effective, safest way. Here's all the hazards. And, by the way, here's the PPE issue, where we don't have that hammered out for a lot of our non-routines. Right, and theoretically we may have something like a pre-job hazard analysis, but that only works if you really understand what the risk is and what how to fix it and sometimes you don't know till you get into it.
Speaker 1:I can tell you there's a lot of projects specifically around this house where I'm like, oh, just do that real quick, and then I get into it and it takes way longer or she has me do it, and then it's never way more steps than I thought and so, again, you need someone who really has a very defined and clear understanding of some of those non-routines to help you fill out that form, to make sure you're really capturing absolutely.
Speaker 1:I remember these are opinions, so yep, this is based on what we've seen over the last 12 months all right so seeing through audits, safety evaluations, training, walkthroughs, acquisitions, just you name it, all the things is just what we have personally seen ourselves.
Speaker 2:So my fifth one is the most interesting one. It's all about the technology. Yeah, I'm talking about robots, computer screens. How do you lock out now if the computer screen goes down and you can't lock it out?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we did a while back a couple of episodes on the robots and the AI coming in and how is that going to work with safety? But I think specifically what we're seeing is we used to have some kind of non-regulated, non-psm related management of change tool, something that was a checklist. Yeah, that was like hey, did you update your emergency maps?
Speaker 2:Did you do?
Speaker 1:did you get the procedure? Did you do the training? Did you do the training? Did you do a PPE evaluation All the people that would normally sign off for something like a management of change, for something that affects the ammonia system. We have that same type of document. We make any kind of change to make sure that we're capturing. Did we do a lockout? Did we train people on the lockout? Do we need to make sure that the lockout's accessible? Maybe I need to figure out now folks are having to go to an MCC room or whatever. We just have to have a method to capture that.
Speaker 2:You can drive a new forklift with the new computer systems. People think there's absolutes to them.
Speaker 1:You could override them.
Speaker 2:So you got to learn the equipment. You got to learn the equipment, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so that really ties back into that onboarding process of we're seeing more risk than I think we ever have before because we've got lots of new technology.
Speaker 2:So is that our biggest solution of all these? I think, yeah. I think all of them tie in to one thing you got to re-look at your onboarding of the process.
Speaker 1:Whatever that looks like, I think people really have to, yeah because we've got more risk than we ever have, because we've got new folks, new to the industry. Don't really understand all that's involved all the time in terms of like the utilities and the maintenance and the sanitation and the intensified cleaning and where they didn't work five years and then move up, and then move up.
Speaker 2:That's not there. So you've got to change that. Now we've got new equipment.
Speaker 1:Maybe we're installing because of some of the turnover new equipment. We're not getting the right details captured in the procedures, or no procedure at all. We're not getting the right details captured in the training, or maybe training at all. So I think we really got to go back and look at the basic foundation of our programs and instead of just yep, I've got a safety program. It's kind of peace.
Speaker 2:Yep, I did angel lockout yeah.
Speaker 1:I came and I'm going to bring this. I like this paragraph of my programs. I'm a third and now it's a mixture of you got to back up and look at it. Yep and really make sure we understand the jobs, all of them, the routine and the non-routine.
Speaker 2:Don't do it as a silo. Get people involved. Get people involved.
Speaker 1:And then make sure absolutely the right stakeholders are involved. So safety may only be a stakeholder in some things. They may not be the person that is in that program or those procedures. They may just work with and in combination with maintenance, utilities, production.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. That's what we got today All right.
Speaker 1:Well, that's our opinion. If you want more information on this, you can head over to allen-safetycom. We would love to do some in-person stuff for you audit, safety evaluations, any kind of procedures, ppe, lockout, you name it. Otherwise, if you are like you know what, that's not really in the budget to have you guys come and work with us, but we do want the data. We've got a whole bunch of different over a hundred different videos on our allensafetycoachingcom site, which also comes with free email-based coaching, which is awesome, so you can talk to Joe and I for free if you are a member of the Allen Safety Coaching community. So we would love to see you over there. And, other than that, have a great week, everybody, and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to Safe, efficient, profitable a worker safety podcast. If you're looking for more in-depth discussions or step-by-step solutions on all of the different safety and regulatory topics, please visit us at wwwallensafetycoachingcom for web-based virtual coaching and training, or at wwwallensafetycom to book our team for onsite services, training sessions, to order merchandise, to learn more about our team and what services we provide in the field, or just simply to request a topic for us to cover on our next podcast. If you found today's podcast helpful and would like to support our podcast further, please help us by subscribing, liking and sharing this podcast with anyone that could benefit from the information we cover here, as that helps us to continue to put out this free content. Thank you.
