Got Safety?

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and then some. It's worth the safety of janitors as they go about their jobs, the money saved thanks to low workers' comp and liability insurance premiums, the peace of mind of customers and the knowledge that all facets of a company are on the same page.

For the past 16 years, Building Service Contractors Association International (BSCAI) has been giving out safety awards, honoring a handful of building service contractors each year with the best safety records. This year, 10 companies — in four categories based on hours worked annually — were recognized at the November convention in Orlando, Fla.

"Safety is certainly one of those metrics that is tangible and allows people to compare and benchmark," says Chris Mundschenk, executive vice president of BSCAI. "Companies that take safety very seriously for their employees and for their clients should stand up and be proud of what they've done and what they've accomplished."

Keeping safety at the top of mind, using a variety of carrot-and-stick approaches to incentivize best practices and minimize or eliminate dangerous incidents, is how industry leaders have achieved great safety records. Whether through contests and competitions encouraging safe behavior among employees, providing incentives such as profit-sharing or strict oversight and management, it is clear that the knowledge and participation of everyone in an organization is needed to be the best of the best.

Culture of Safety

Creating a strong company culture that values not only safe procedures and adherence to federal regulations involves rigorous commitment to education, training and teamwork.

"Safety has to be part of the culture," says Steve Shuchat, president of Clean All Services in Sidney, Ohio, which received a safety award from BSCAI this year. "Without that, then the rest of the team atmosphere we have disintegrates. Safety is really the backbone to everything else."

A safety record is like a scorecard for the internal health of a company, Shuchat says, with a record reflecting that the whole package is in good working order.

When Clean All was a small operation, it wasn't difficult to make operational safety a priority. As the company grew, however, and employees became more geographically spread, a renewed focus on institutionalizing safety was prioritized. With about 240 employees in 12 counties, the safety program has found its groove.

"It's been very important for us and there is an emphasis on our human resource manager's job to make sure that that's communicated out throughout the whole company," Shuchat says. "That continued emphasis has changed into a really clear reporting program and a real clear communication out to every employee we have."

A huge component of any safety program is communication — with employees, with management and with clients. Sharing data with customers is a great way to strengthen partnerships, as it demonstrates a willingness to be transparent for the sake of improvement.

Being responsive to job site safety concerns can also go a long way toward retaining accounts. For employees of Marston Mills, Mass.-based J&S Cleaning, a small company which services many accounts with few employees, communication logs are kept in every building cleaned so that issues can be addressed even if both parties aren't in the building at the same time.

"One of the things that is stressed very highly is that you can make an oversight, a mistake, in cleaning, and that can be corrected," says James Massave, president, whose company also won the BCSAI safety award this year. "However, safety mistakes, ethical/moral mistakes, errors of that nature could mean that the company will be terminated. You cannot repair your reputation and that's something that is very highly stressed."

One of the most prominent safety-focused BSCs in the industry is St. Louis-based Mitch Murch Maintenance Management Company (MMMM), which has won the BSCAI safety award 15 of 16 years. The company is in the largest category, reserved for those that log more than 2,598,961 employee hours annually.

Communicating about safety has become second nature at MMMM, says Tim Murch, president.

"Whenever I see one of my team members, I look them in the eye and give them a big smile and tell them to have a safe day," Murch says. "And every e-mail is signed with, 'Have a great and safe day.' It's just in front of us all the time."

Safety is run like a separate business within the company, and is a huge profit center, says Murch. Even though the impetus for running such a stringent program is financial, it is also rooted in employee welfare concerns.

"What we really want to communicate to our team members that's most important is to let them know that we're more concerned about their health, well-being and safety and want to make it about them going home in the same or better condition than when they went to work."

With about 3,500 employees working in 12 different states, MMMM's safety program needs to be clear, precise and engaging. Murch says strong leadership has been key to driving the message home to all employees.

"It was led from the top with my involvement, my commitment, my ownership and I was 'walking the talk' as compared to just firing memos out and not living it," Murch says.

Among the different programs MMMM runs are "safety bingo," which makes the biggest impact on employees because it is a fun incentive — with money prizes on the line. Everyone in the entire company, including Murch, plays safety bingo with a "Be Safe" bingo card, with wins awarded vertically, diagonally and horizontally.

The bingo numbers are broadcast each morning by voice mail or e-mail, with an accompanying safety message. When team members get a winning row or column, they have a chance to double their winnings by reciting the day's safety message. Anyone who has a lost time accident must stop the game and start over with a fresh bingo card.

"So everybody's policing each other and supporting each other and raising awareness each day," Murch says.

In addition to quarterly safety audits, an internal safety training program and a quarterly safety newsletter, the company recently instituted a program for supervisor and manager training. The SafePath Certified Managers Program just graduated its first class of certified managers — completed by about one-third of the company's 100 managers.

The certification involves a full examination, Murch says, as well as completion of a CPR and first aid course. To pass, managers must have accident-free accounts with safety inspection audit scores of 90 percent or better.

"It's a very rigorous criteria we laid out because we want it to be earned, not given, and they've got to get recertified every year, also," Murch says. "So that's something that we're very proud of."

Workers' Comp and Liability

Training and educating employees about chemical and equipment use is integral to any safety program — particularly in regard to preventing on-the-job injuries. Workplace accidents can be fatal for employees or building occupants; less serious injuries can also have debilitating and lifelong effects on workers.

Major areas of concern when it comes to workers' comp claims are: slips, trips and falls; strain injuries caused by improper use of tools and machines; and lack of proper personal protective equipment (PPE).

The costs associated with such incidents are sobering. Even one incident can drastically affect the experience modification rate, which is a comparative number based on the claim expectation or average for companies of similar size. A mod of 1.0 would place a company at the industry average claim rate. The lower the experience mod, the lower insurance premiums are, so it really does pay to indoctrinate employees with safety messages.

For companies like J&S, which has 15 employees, just one incident could hurt premiums for many years, but they've managed to stay incident-free.

"Each year you don't have an incident you accumulate better experience mods and merit rate decreases," Massave says. "So for example, my workmans' comp rate is the absolute lowest you can go. Right now I have a 15 percent merit credit and I also have a .15 experience mod. But if you have an incident, they kill you."

At a very large company with many employees, like MMMM, it can be difficult to maintain an impeccable safety record — but that doesn't mean they don't try.

The company's focus on safety is a product of a hard insurance market in the early 1990s, and the resulting severe insurance premium. So, a safety director was hired and safety became a top priority. MMMM's mod rate is a low 0.73, thanks to a mindset that all accidents can be prevented, Murch adds.

"We're very interested in the well being of our team members and obviously the mod rate comes into play and the lower we can get our mod, the more competitive we can be and the less we're paying out in insurance premiums — and those were substantial at our volume," Murch says.

All Clean has focused intently on investigation and follow-up of incidents, which contributes to the company's culture of safety, says Shuchat. Employees are sent immediately for a drug test, and supervisors team up with human resources management to determine the factors that contributed to an accident, and what might prevent it from happening in the future.

"Also, during that investigation, it's important to just make sure that it is our accident," Shuchat says. "Often, in our industry, a person may be injured at home, come to work and then contact us about that injury, understanding that it was from work, or felt they made it worse from being at work. We want to make sure it's related to an incident that actually happened at work and a good investigation can clear that up pretty well."

Some customers require BSCs to have a certain mod rate before ever signing a contract.

"There are also certain customers in the corporate world who will require a specific modification rate, along with industrial manufacturing clients, so that's also driving us, as a pre-qualifier," Murch says. "Certain accounts are more geared toward the importance of safety in the corporate world and in industrial manufacturing, much more so than in a commercial office building."

Insurance carriers also impact how BSCs do business, requiring documentation about accidents and injuries in order to calculate a mod. Another cost consideration is liability insurance; many BSCs have vehicle fleets that require driver background checks and sometimes, for trucks, certifications.

Playing By the Rules and Regulations

BSCs need to be accountable not only to customers — who often have their own rules regarding compliance and documentation of injuries and accidents — but also to regulating bodies such as OSHA and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"There are many standards that apply to the janitorial industry, but first and foremost would be the hazard communications standard, which is under the Federal Code of Regulations 1910.1200," says Tom Covilli, vice president of safety and risk management for MMMM. "What that does is addresses the types of cleaning chemicals we use in the workplace and how we need to manage them safely."

Other important regulations include standards for PPE, reporting and record keeping, walking and working surfaces, occupational noise exposure, bloodborne pathogens and general environmental controls.

J&S provides all necessary PPE to employees, including back supports, gloves, goggles and shoe booties. Workers are trained to wear all the protection they may need for basic janitorial tasks — Massave even requires employees to enter the building wearing gloves, so that janitors protect themselves from bacteria and illnesses such as influenza.

All employees who are assigned a vehicle need to pass a Department of Motor Vehicles check on their driving records. Those whose unsafe driving records would raise insurance rates are denied vehicle access, Massave says. Also, maintenance logs in company vehicles require employees to take in vehicles for service regularly; if they are not followed, and the lack of maintenance causes an accident, the individual driver is required to pay for any damage.

"This is a strong message the company sends them and it's been a consistent deterrent and we haven't had an occurrence in 23 years. Nobody wants to pay for that," Massave says.

Investing in great safety programs is no easy task — from their creation to their implementation, they need to be executed with attention to detail and a commitment to employees. BSCs know that the service business is all about people. Keeping employees healthy and engaged in the safety process while holding costs down is a win-win.

"At the end of the day, being safe pays off financially," Covilli says. "Dollars not spent on occupational injuries or illnesses go directly to the bottom line."