Workplace safety has been a challenge as long as people have been building. Some safety risks or hazards will never be eliminated. Progress on reducing severe injuries and fatalities has been powerful enough that contractors are examining the next level of health risks that offer a different set of challenges—hand and soft tissue injuries and repetitive stress damage.
Whether dust particles get in a worker’s eyes, a sore back turns chronic or inflamed joints are slow to heal, the smaller injuries are getting a closer look. After all, chronic pain and temporary tissue damage cost workers and employers thousands of productive hours yearly. And many are also finding ways to address and reduce these safety issues.
The construction site is a place of hard physical work, often under heavy pressure. Electrical contracting firms and their employees face some evolving challenges, including more compressed project schedules, a flow of less experienced workers to fill labor demand and lack of understanding when it comes to newer technologies, said Wesley Wheeler, executive director of safety for NECA.
Culture depends on the organization
Addressing these challenges starts with improving safety culture on the work site. What a project’s safety culture looks like depends on the organization’s leadership and individual projects, Wheeler said. The local supervisor sets the tone and expectations for many jobs. How that is accomplished varies based on the size of the work site and crew.
“A small organization where everyone knows and watches out for each other is very different from the large organizations that must rely on written programs, policies and procedures to provide the needed documentation for compliance,” he said.
With the slew of new infrastructure work underway and in planning around the country, this means that the number of new, less skilled or untrained workers on the job will be increasing, so better awareness and safety training need to be a priority for current and future workforces.
Generation gap
In general, veteran electricians have a different attitude toward safety compliance than their younger counterparts, said Liz Bruno, safety director at Forest Electric Corp., New York. The training background they had from their apprenticeship—often decades ago—was less focused on safety than it is now. Young people coming out of apprenticeship programs have been drilled on safety practices and bring that fresh information onto the work site. However, electricians at Forest Electric—like others in New York City—must continue their safety training throughout their career.
Like much of the country, New York work sites are often more crowded than in the past, and with tight deadlines that require more trades to work in closer proximity, often with one trade hurrying in behind another. In New York especially, work often takes place vertically, as opposed to more rural areas where projects are more horizontal.
In these crowded and fast-paced environments, “it’s pretty easy to race ahead and leave the safety part behind,” Bruno said. That’s why Forest Electric holds safety committee meetings once a month to hear from everyone on the team, from the CEO down. They also encourage the entire team of foremen, project managers and workers to raise issues that have developed on the work site—from tools that do or don’t work well to safety practices.
The company installs safety cages on most job sites that include every piece of PPE that could possibly be needed, from gloves and safety glasses to first-aid kits and defibrillators. The company conducts a “text-’em-all” instant message protocol, through which safety directors reach out to their crew with reminders and alerts. The company also makes training videos related to proper tool use, and in some cases manufacturers go to job sites to ensure workers are familiar with proper and safe use of equipment.
When it comes to the culture, though, the challenge is communication. Forest Electric makes a point to encourage and listen to feedback from on-site workers and their supervisors. One recommendation that led to a new company policy, for instance, was to only use gasketed safety glasses, because other forms of goggles allowed debris to penetrate past the lens and get in people’s eyes, while the gasketed glasses have no space where particulates can pass through, Bruno said.
Commonwealth Electric Co. of the Midwest, Lincoln, Neb., has been experiencing record-breaking growth, and is doing so with a goal to keep job site safety at the highest level possible, the company reported. Todd Longenecker, Commonwealth Electric’s safety director, has been focusing on the safety culture as crews get larger and projects get more numerous and complex. Over the past three years, the company has broken records in revenue and man-hours.
Much of its work takes place in industrial environments and on large commercial construction projects. Workers’ most common injuries are not the news-making accidents, but the smaller health hazards that sometimes take place over time. Today, Commonwealth Electric, like other contractors, finds that most injuries relate to soft tissue strain or bruising, or skin lacerations.
“The challenge that I see for our people is keeping [safety] awareness up and not letting complacency set in,” Longenecker said.
At any work site, complacency can result from experience, repetitive work and a sense that other professionals on site are taking on responsibility for keeping workers safe. Longenecker pointed to projects such as building a large data center where there might be 30–40 safety professionals on that single site. It’s not hard for any worker, including electricians, to take false comfort in thinking that someone else would speak up if work was ever unsafe.
“They need to take ownership over their own safety, because it’s not practical for a safety person to be watching 24-7,” he said.
To prevent such complacency issues, “we try to rotate people, especially apprentices,” Longenecker said, so that their work doesn’t become overly repetitive, and they also become more well-rounded electricians.
Additionally, the management on-site is trained to watch for potential issues, even when the work is routine.
“If foremen are passionate about the safety of others, then it becomes contagious to the other people in the field,” he said. “Our foremen in the field are the most important piece to our safety success and culture.”
A matter of respect
Good safety culture on a work site comes down to respecting those around you, said Regina McMichael, a Florida-based motivational safety speaker. On any project, the on-site team is made up of vulnerable humans who would like to earn a paycheck and go home at the end of the day. Nearly everyone has someone counting on them to return home safely, whether it’s a family, friend or a pet, she commented.
According to McMichael, the best way to ensure the security of all on-site personnel is to give project leadership the tools to be good managers. Traditionally, managers have risen to leadership positions because of their technical skills and experience, while the soft, human skills were on the back burner. That’s changing.
“We have to define what being a good human means from a management perspective,” she said. “It means that we train our people to understand diversity in the workplace, to understand the different age groups,” and to communicate with each member of the team.
Preventing an injury—whether large or small—often depends on an interaction between a supervisor and an individual at risk. If an electrician is having a bad day, or if they have trouble at home that could be impacting their ability to work, that’s something a supervisor can often identify.
“One of the biggest problems with [traditional work site] cultures is the inability for people to openly speak up about things that are going on in their lives, the things that could impact their ability to safely do their work,” McMichael said.
On the other hand, a strong project leader keeps an eye on members of the workforce and might notice when something is out of the norm. That kind of manager or supervisor might approach a worker with a question such as, “You seem particularly distracted these days, what’s going on and how can I help?” Maybe that individual has been losing sleep because of a family problem, at which point the supervisor says, “Hey, why don’t I keep you on the ground today.”
Such communication may be easier said than done on a large and active work site. McMichael pointed out that the more people there are reporting to a supervisor, the harder it is to create that human connection with each one. That means watching out for the safety of others at times available, such as during a stretch and flex at the beginning of the day.
Most supervisors have indicated, when asked, that they want more training on communication skills around leadership, she said, and her company offers training processes to help them communicate better with workers and develop those human skills.
“We know that professional development makes for a happier workforce, it makes for less turnover,” and it improves safety, she added.
common sense matters
Safety training has changed over the course of a generation, said Bradley Caldwell, corporate safety director for Morrow-Meadows Corp., City of Industry, Calif. Today, some of the younger electricians stepping into supervisory roles have been extensively trained on safety their entire careers.
“I think that we put people in supervisory roles that are going to do the right thing” when it comes to recognizing safety issues and helping prevent them from causing injuries, Caldwell said.
Common sense is still central, and important for everyone who enters an active work site.
“I think to a certain extent, everyone needs to be responsible for their own safety at some point, too,” Caldwell said. “We issue policies and procedures and we provide training—on the flip side, someone has to follow the direction that they’re given.”
About The Author
SWEDBERG is a freelance writer based in western Washington. She can be reached at [email protected].