Our employees believe and actively engage in Richard Industrial Group’s safety program, which is essential to safety excellence. This is demonstrated through our 2016 safety accomplishments. Richard Industrial is very proud to have concluded 2016 without an OSHA recordable injury or illness. In addition, we were awarded the ABC National Safety Excellence Award.
We consider safety a value, and our safety vision — defined in Richard Industrial’s mission statement — is based on the following:
- Richard Industrial believes all incidents and injuries are preventable.
- All members of management and supervision are charged with the responsibility of preventing incidents or conditions that could lead to injuries.
- Safety must be considered an integral part of quality control, cost reduction, and job efficiency, and should never be sacrificed for production.
- All supervisors are accountable for the safety of their employees.
- Field employees are aligned with our safety philosophy: “Safety and quality are the expectation of each employee; cost and schedule are not your responsibility.”
Richard Industrial’s Construction Safety Committee meets regularly to discuss our safety performance, review safety policies and procedures, and develop goals. Convening monthly, it is chaired by our president and includes senior management. The committee visibly demonstrates Richard Industrial’s commitment to safety from internal and external perspectives and serves in developing our safety culture.
Another key element of Richard Industrial’s safety process, which was critical to our success in 2016, was increased front-level supervision involvement and accountability in the safety process. Senior management defining the frontline supervisor’s responsibility and accountability for employee safety is key to our continued success.
Employee involvement in our safety program is continually managed and supported. Richard Industrial’s system for measuring the fulfillment of employee safety responsibilities is essentially the safety program itself. Field behavior-based observations and site safety inspections measure employee performance. Safety meetings and job safety analysis are used to prompt employee participation; stop-work authority and near miss reporting incite employee intervention.
Another safety management system recently implemented by Richard Industrial is an employee recognition award program. When employees are observed exhibiting exceptional effort well above minimum requirements for the protection of personnel or equipment, they can be given a safety recognition award. The employee will receive a formal recognition from key members of the project and/or home office management. The employee may be recognized in safety meetings and/or company publications. The supervisor is always encouraged to practice safety recognition with employees. A monetary award is not required for employee recognition, but the use of positive reinforcement that comes from recognition is deemed paramount to the program’s effectiveness. Further approval from management is not required, and the details of the recognition and/ or award are tracked, trended and shared throughout the organization.
Leading indicators are used by Richard Industrial to measure compliance with our policies and best practices and subsequently shared companywide. We collect and share lagging indicators such as statistics and trends to effectively promote positive change in the safety program. Richard Industrial assembles our senior management annually to review the previous year’s statistics and discuss the current year’s safety goals.
We are continuing our top-notch safety practices, programs, and committees throughout 2017, with employee safety woven into every aspect of the group. We continue to keep safety as a core value for all so it always comes first.
For more information, visit www.Richardig.com or call (409) 832-7827.