Interactive program boosts safety smarts’
Saves valuable work time in chemical plant
Safety training is a necessary element of employee health programming in any industrial facility. But with three and sometimes four shifts per day, scheduling is difficult, and often impacts productivity severely.
Farmland Hydro LP (FHLP), a major producer of phosphatic fertilizer products, overcame that problem with an interactive safety training program from Mastery Technologies Inc. of Plano, TX.
Vacations, overtime work, rotating shift schedules, and normal absenteeism have made training schedules difficult to manage at FHLP. Employees were training outside of their regular 40-hour week, and overtime was driving up operating costs. "We were concerned that training goals were not being achieved at a satisfactory rate," recalls Jerry Hawthorne, plant safety director.
About three years ago, the plant, which employs about 300 workers, implemented the Mastery Technologies program. It contains a 12-course library, which includes courses on hazardous communication, machine safeguarding, electrical safety, fall protection, lockout/tag out, confined space entry, overhead equipment, hearing conversation, back safety, respiratory protection, resource recovery training, and process safety management. All of the courses are installed on a computer hard drive, so employees never have to handle CDs. The employees only enter their four-digit payroll number and select the course they want to take from the list on the screen.
"There is a lot of repetitiveness in safety training, and this system helps," says Hawthorne. "Also, the information they all receive is consistent. When courses are taught by different individuals, some important facts could be omitted."
Program begins with tutorial
Before employees use the system, they attend a class or view a video tape on how it works, explains Kirk Berry, vice president of sales at Mastery Technologies. "A lot of times, it’s a new way of doing things," he notes. "Employees are shown how to stop and start the program, how to log on, and so forth. This way, they can ease into it."
At FHLP, the tutorial is delivered via overhead projector during periodic safety meetings, says Hawthorne.
The safety program can be used directly from a computer hard drive or installed on a company’s intranet. "It employs broadcast-quality video, and is interactive to ensure successful learning," says Berry. "When the program discovers a weak area, it will refocus on that area and will continue to reteach it until you make a score of 100%."
"One of most important things initially is setting up the administration of the program properly," notes Hawthorne. "Some of the features allow you to categorize reports by department, job type, title, supervisor, and so on — so reporting later on makes more sense."
"Training requirements are different for each position, so you have a particular curriculum based on your job type," Berry explains. "Each worker has between five and 10 courses to complete, and after each one is completed, the menu changes. Supervisors can then pull reports on the whole department which will show the percentage of employees that have completed the training."
"You can actually see how long a person is on the terminal," adds Hawthorne. "There are pretests and post-tests available, which I make a requirement. We require that our people master each course."
One of most effective ways to implement the program is by using supervisors, says Berry. "You put the responsibility on them to get their own employees to use the program, and you empower the employee to do it, as well," he notes. "Many companies use an incentive program based on how many courses are completed within a certain time period."
Employees take to program
Hawthorne says his employees have really taken to the program. "They’ve done very well," he observes. "They were a bit skeptical at first, but nobody has had trouble operating the software. And for those who don’t read or write very well, it inserts the answers for them." Some employees will even revisit specific programs on their own if they feel they need a refresher course, he adds.
Hawthorne appreciated the system’s record-keeping capabilities. "It keeps track of everything; you can print reports out every month," he notes. "We have four shifts, and we can print out reports by supervisor, as well as plantwide."
Plant employees have become so conversant in safety issues that they will actually challenge Hawthorne from time to time. "They’ll argue sometimes about things like safety harnesses," he says. "In the past, when most safety classes were done that was the last time you heard about those issues, but with this program the workers seem to retain more. They’ll actually come up to me and have discourse about something in the workplace and relate it to the program."
This is not unusual, observes Berry, who says that employees who take the program "usually increase their knowledge by about 300%."
Time is money . . .
One of the biggest savings to FHLP has been in time — which translates both into money and improved safety education. "It generally takes half the time of a traditional safety program to complete ours," Berry explains. "That’s a big saving in cost of delivery and productivity. You don’t have to shut down a production line to have 15 people in class.
"You can train people around the clock as their personal work schedule permits," he continues. "Instead of having to set aside several hours for the week, a worker can start today, pick up where he left off next week, and so on."
Hawthorne adds: "While you can’t necessarily prove that the program helps reduce accidents and injuries, it has reduced all the time our supervisors used to spend conducting safety training classes. Now, we have the time to develop new programs and teach the workers other things that are valuable to them. For example, we can implement accident prevention classes, which will cause people to think about doing their jobs in a way that will prevent accidents. And of course, 80% to 90% of us can train on regular time, and we have our key operators where they need to be. This is a major labor savings that more than pays for the software."
The cost of the program starts at $695 per course, based on the number of CD-ROMs that are needed or the number of network users, notes Berry. He concedes it’s difficult to prove the program actually reduces injuries. "It’s hard to tie a reduction in injuries specifically to training," he explains. "Over a three-year period, a company may have installed other systems, or stopped using a specific chemical. There’s just no way to know. Most people look at the employees, they see a big difference in their knowledge base, and they assume they will reap the benefits of that increased knowledge."
[For more information, contact: Jerry Hawthorne, Industrial Safety Associates, 3451 Christina Grove Circle N., Lakeland, FL 33813. Telephone: (863) 519-1298. Fax: (863) 533-8793. Web site: www.ubsafe.com.]
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