Canadian Occupational Safety

EMPLOYERS SAFEST 2018 CANADA'S GOLD K eeping 1,440 employees safe around the clock in a workplace that spans 630 square kilometres takes an unrelenting commitment to safety. Toronto Hydro, which serves Canada's largest city, distributes about 19 per cent of the electricity consumed in Ontario to 768,000 customers. Crews must work safely on power lines carrying up to 27,000 volts; climb into bucket trucks and onto aerial platforms; scale ladders and poles; and squeeze into confined spaces. Their work environment changes every day with weather, traffic and other variables. "Our employees are busiest when weather conditions are at their worst," says Phil Genoway, the company's manager, health and safety. "During storms that pose significant safety hazards, they need to rise to the occasion and overcome the risks while the public runs for shelter." According to Genoway, planning is a critical component in keeping safety top of mind with employees who are dealing with constant workplace fluctuations. Plans must foresee challenges that are not always obvious. For example, Sam Sadeghi, director, design and construction (customer connection) and his 130- person team can plan only one week in advance because the work depends on developers' and contractors' schedules. "On Fridays, our supervisors, project co-ordinators and other stakeholders create a plan for the following week," he says. "On Monday mornings when it's published, supervisors review it with crew leaders who are encouraged to express their top safety concerns." When one crew leader pointed out that traffic at a site around a busy downtown intersection would create safety issues for workers, supervisors took action. "We immediately brought in a traffic control service provider to set up cones and barriers in advance of our arrival at the site," says Sadeghi. These helped divert the flow of cars, bicycles, streetcars and pedestrians away from the work location. The occupational health and safety team also develops monthly improvement plans for operations departments that are based on detailed analyses of their performance. Plans contain leading indicators for improvement such as inspec- tion quality, investigation quality and work site risk assessment effectiveness. "This gives us good statistics and helps take some of the administrative load off our supervisors so they can spend more time in the field," says Sadeghi. While Toronto Hydro's state-of-the-art technology is an indispensable tool in managing EHS, in-person meetings, training sessions and communications remain vital to its safety culture. For example, ad-hoc huddles are necessary for good on-site communications among crews. Taking this a step farther, the OHS team is formalizing "daily huddles" led by crew leaders across the company. This involves short meetings every morning (in addition to the daily work site risk assessment) to discuss safety concerns from the previous 24 hours, learn from them and look ahead. Genoway reports that at the corporate level, an annual Safety Refresher Event helps refocus, re-energize and re-motivate employees. At this year's series of half- day sessions, one interactive module gave participants experience in developing an emergency plan. He attributes much of the event's success to the involvement of the joint health and safety committee in planning and development. These, and myriad other initiatives, have led to impressive safety results. The company's total recordable injury frequency rate has dropped by 75 per cent since 2009; its lost-time injury frequency rate is 82 per cent lower than the Canadian Electricity Association average; and Workplace Safety and Insurance Board claims have fallen by 40 per cent since 2014. Genoway reiterates that a major contributor to this success is starting with plans that "map out what you intend to do and how you are going to do it, then making sure you follow and execute." He emphasizes that employee engagement is the key to any successful safety program — and that support and resources from Toronto Hydro's senior leadership have made it all possible. UTILITIES AND ELECTRICAL Peterborough Utilities Group Silver Kitchener- Wilmot Hydro Silver Burlington Hydro Silver Y oung people love technology. It's a fact. They grew up with the Internet and most of them can't remember a time before cellphones. Pronghorn Controls knows this, so given the fact that 18 per cent of its workers are under the age of 25, it introduced mobile-friendly safety software many years ago. Workers can conduct inspections of vehicles, equipment and tools as well as complete leading indicator reporting, such as near misses and hazard IDs, all on their smartphones. The program has a participation rate of around 90 per cent. "I always have my phone on me or nearby, so it makes it very easy to take two minutes and fill out those documents," says Logan Ironside, 23, who started at Pronghorn at age 18. "And it opens your eyes to see more hazards because you don't have to worry about that paperwork and hours of filling out sheets… And you don't end up putting it off until later or forgetting about it." Pronghorn's Personal Safety Intervention program empowers workers to engage in conversations about improving safety — with anyone from the president of the company to a first-year apprentice — and ask questions. The program also empowers them to intervene if they see anyone working in a manner that appears unsafe. Young workers are an especially important component to this program because they have a different outlook than the more experienced workers. "A young worker might be able to see something that somebody who's been there doing it for 15 years wouldn't be able to see. They've seen it over and over again, you become complacent, but now you have new sets of eyes and different ways of thinking," says Ironside. In order to engage new employees in Pronghorn's safety culture, the presi- dent and CEO sends each new hire a personal, handwritten letter. The letter, along with a copy of the company's safety policies and core values, is sent to their home address, so it can be shared with their family — which parents of young workers particularly appreciate. "Families feel their son or daughter is now in good capable hands of a company that cares for their employees," says Vince Johansson, manager of quality, health, safety and environment. These family members are often kept top of mind at the work site through Pronghorn's Why We Work Safe board, which displays photos of family members, friends, pets, souped up trucks and ski boats — anything that moti- vates the workers to stay safe on the job. "This campaign works very well, and people are thinking about their family before they take a sidestep or short cut," says Johansson. Pronghorn works hard to cultivate a culture that does not tolerate bullying or harassment. In the early '90s when Johansson first started in the trades, it was common practice to make jokes at the expense of others, but fortunately, the industry is changing. "It is a lot more comforting coming to work knowing you're not going to get made fun of," says Ironside. "There's other ways to have fun or lighten the mood at work." While he is still just 23, Ironside takes pride in mentoring those workers who are even younger who are coming up behind him. It's this level of ownership for health and safety that keeps young workers safe at Pronghorn every day. "I can come up with my own ways to teach and pass on (my safety knowl- edge) and make sure other young workers are safe and looked after, so their families and friends can feel confident that they're going to be coming home at the end of the day, just as mine were." 24 Canadian Occupational Safety | www.cos-mag.com YOUNG WORKER SAFETY GOLD Innovative Automation Walsh Canada Silver Silver

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