Human Resources

Safety check

By Todd Shryock

Print This Page

Send this page to a friend

"As far as safety goes, we were not where we wanted to be," says Mike Kinsella, the facility's environmental, safety, security and health specialist. "We were a new Deluxe facility at the end of '95, and we had a lot of new hires. We were running into a situation where we had a lot of people in an unfamiliar environment doing a lot of unfamiliar things. We needed to step up our safety efforts."

The first step was to implement the existing corporate safety programs and initiatives and make sure they were enforced.

Deluxe is the largest check printer in the world, but the Streetsboro facility handles a wide variety of printing tasks, so some customization was needed.

"We needed to work with our employees to train on the Deluxe way of cooperation and working together," says Kinsella. "It's not just we would say, 'Here is safety in the workplace,' but 'Let's all get together and say what is safety here in the Streetsboro facility.' There was heavy involvement by our environmental, safety, security and health team. I just implement what they bring back to me from the employee base."

The employees making the products often have the best insight into what the hazards of the job are and how to avoid them.

"Internally, everyone recognizes that a lot has been done to make the processes and machines safe, but we wanted to build in safe behavior," says Kinsella. "We hire good employees through a strenuous process, but we needed to get them to realize that even in a safe environment, complacency can set in. It has nothing to do with attitude or the type of people you hire, but it's a natural thing."

Deluxe uses examples of how people in other companies have been severely injured on the job and how a workplace injury follows you home and affects your life in many ways.

All of these safety initiatives reduced the Streetsboro facility's workers' comp costs by 98.8 percent and led to a Governor's Excellence in Workers' Compensation Award in 2003.

"There are a lot of resources out there that you shouldn't be afraid to use," says Kinsella.

Every county has a safety council that is primarily funded by the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation. The council meets monthly to discuss safety programs and features a guest speaker.

"It's a good, easy way to get continuous training for your safety people and to take the best practices back to work with them," says Kinsella.

One of the best resources to help reduce workplace injuries is the BWC itself.

"If you have never been involved with the division of safety and hygiene within the BWC, they are an excellent resource for reducing your workers' comp costs and complying with all the regulatory requirements," says Kinsella. "Some look at the division as the state agency of compliance and enforcement, and that makes them a little fearful of having them come in. But they don't understand what the bureau does and what resources it has. We've used them many times."

Kinsella says his facility has used the industrial hygienist on numerous occasions to check chemical safety and air quality levels, and has also had an ergonomics specialist make recommendations on how to prevent those types of injuries.

Every business pays a portion of its workers' comp premiums to support these programs, so if you are not using them, you are wasting money.

Deluxe used the BWC programs in conjunction with its own corporate safety programs and culture, but Kinsella says the most important contributors to improved safety were the employees.

"If you took them out of the mix, there is no way we would be where we are today," says Kinsella. "I'm not doing all the jobs they are doing and am not seeing the hazards first-hand. The best ideas have to come from the employees. You also get better buy-in that way, because they play the major part in any safety program.

"The employees are the heroes of our safety success." How to reach: Deluxe Corp., www.deluxe.com