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Enhance Your Safety Culture

by | Feb 28, 2022 | Safety | 0 comments

Enhance Your Safety Culture

Written by Tom Dunn

In the never ending quest to make sure every employee returns home safely each day, we wanted to take a deeper look into the concept of a company safety culture and the opportunities available for enhancing it.

We have previously touched on this topic in our weekly business tips articles (4 tips to creating a culture of safety) that included high level concepts like communication, training/employee development, preparing for safety, written procedures and having a safety “guru” on staff.

In this article we want to identify two specific, affordable and long lasting ways you can enhance your company safety culture. Both of these are offered by the only organization representing commercial tree care companies across the U.S, the Tree Care Industry Association (TCIA). Full disclosure, the author worked at TCIA for 7 years.

The Certified Tree Care Safety Professional (CTSP) and the Arborist Safety Training Institute (ASTI) are two programs that individuals (CTSP) and tree care companies (ASTI) can access to enhance their company’s safety culture.

The CTSP program is one I went through personally. I found it very helpful in my roles at TCIA and continually saw the benefits it provided to tree care companies who had individuals complete the program. The idea behind this designation is to teach an individual about the different ways the adult learner takes in information and identify their own teaching styles to help them become the safety “guru” for their organizations.  

The individual going through this program can come from many different areas of a company, and depending on the size of the organization it might make sense to have more than one individual from a company obtain the designation. There are eligibility requirements, but TCIA will work with individuals to get them enrolled in the program.

The program is definitely a commitment for the individual going through it and for the company that is paying for it, but the long term benefits are far reaching for both.

There are other benefits as well. Insurance company underwriters are very interested in working with companies who have CTSP’s on their staff and offer discounted pricing for those companies. OSHA investigators are well aware of the designation and will take it into account during an accident investigation. In fact, as part of some settlement agreements, they have required companies to enroll individuals in the program.

Spurred on by Covid-19 restrictions, TCIA has made a commitment to transitioning the program to an online format. This has created the added benefit of cutting down on the travel costs that may have deterred companies from committing in the past.

To maintain their CTSP credentials, individuals must re-certify every 3 years, but there are many creative and accessible ways to obtain the CEU’s. Those who continue in the program become part of an active nationwide community for the rest of their working lives.

The ASTI program is another opportunity that not everyone is probably aware of or takes advantage of to enhance their safety culture. Smaller tree care companies who would like to bring in high quality, outside safety training, now have a way to do it affordably. Grants up to $2,000 are available to fund ½ day or full day training. You can utilize TCIA curriculum from the Tree Care Academy programs or other educational material as long as it relates back to safety topics that are important to tree care workers.

There are some caveats behind the ASTI program that you will need to consider. They have been put in place to offer quality safety training that will reach the biggest audience of tree care workers possible. For example, workshops have to be made available to all tree care workers in a particular geographic location and must be held in a neutral location (not at a tree care company shop).

The grantee is also responsible for marketing and registration for the event, but TCIA does offer materials to help as well as a list of approved instructors. There have been a number of tree care companies who have been awarded grants since the program was started. Why not your company?

Both of these programs will show your employees and potential employees that you are serious about creating a positive safety culture. Check out https://www.tcia.org/ for more information.  

ArboRisk is doing its part to help companies assess their safety culture and show employees of your commitment to safety. We have developed a safety culture survey that employees can take with actionable steps for company leaders to address any safety related deficiencies identified. Call us for more information on implementing the survey and check out our Safety Package for one-on-one help.

Tom Dunn

Components of a Safety Culture

by | Feb 28, 2022 | Safety | 0 comments

Components of a Safety Culture

Written by Eric Petersen, CIC

Safety Culture. Those two words sound simple enough, but sometimes can be very complex within tree care companies. Throughout the 18 plus years of working with tree services, I’ve boiled down the complexity of safety cultures to three main components. 

Attitudes and Feelings – Certainly when all three components are present, a tree care company’s safety culture will be the strongest, however, without a solid focus on the attitude and feelings of the team towards safety the overall culture will suffer. That’s why the most important part of a tree care company’s safety culture are the attitudes and feelings of everyone involved. Essentially this begins with the leadership’s commitment towards getting everyone home safe each night and permeates throughout every individual on the team. The messaging that is used helps all believe in a safe workplace and therefore feel secure that everyone is looking out for their own and other’s safety.

Written Programs/Policies – I’ve said it many times before, the commitment to safety must be in writing in the form of a written safety program and policies. Safety is merely a concept that may be hard to grasp for some people, which is why specific expectations and procedures must be outlined in writing for your team to follow. Not only does it create consistency for all involved it gives a physical aspect to the importance of the topic. When a team member can hold a safety program in their hand, there is a transition that happens subconsciously from safety as a concept to a tangible part of their every day work. 

Training – Henry Ford is quoted as saying “The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.” Can you imagine where your business would be today if you did not offer training to your team? Training your employees is the only way to ensure they understand the risk involved with every task they perform and operate in a way that you want for your organization. Training also enables your employees to feel confident that they are working for a company who values their individual safety and personal development. 

Focusing on these three components will drastically improve your safety culture and position your company for great success. 

Since ArboRisk’s mission is to get every arborist home safe each night, we’ve designed a specific consulting package to work one-on-one with your organization. Visit our webpage for the Thrive Safety Package to learn more. In addition to the Thrive Safety Package, all ArboRisk clients receive a Safety Culture Assessment that allows you to peer into your safety culture and find areas that need improvement.

 

4 Tips to Create a Culture of Safety

by | Sep 3, 2021 | Safety | 0 comments

4 Tips to Create a Culture of Safety

Written by Mick Kelly

At ArboRisk, we often hear people say they want to build a better safety culture, but many times they don’t know how to do that. Because we all know a great safety culture doesn’t just look at the health and wellbeing of your employees – it also incorporates equipment maintenance, public safety both on the jobsite and on the road, and your brand reputation, you must be strategic in establishing the safety culture that you want within your organization. 

By creating a strong safety culture, you are developing an ethos for your company and giving your employees an idea of how things are done in your business. Your goal should be to ingrain in the collective memory of your team, through repetition, routine and diligence, the importance of making sure every employee gets home safe each night. 

Here are my 4 tips to create a stronger culture of safety within your business! 

Communication

The key to any culture is communication. If you don’t have a clear, defined idea of what your safety culture is, then this will trickle down to every aspect of your business. It is imperative that the message from leadership is crystal clear, that you are more interested in everyone’s safety than saving a half hour of work. Because of that, you expect your team to follow the guidelines and not to cut corners. It’s a message that has to be repeated every day until it becomes the mantra of the company. 

 

Training/Employee Development

Training is one of the largest key aspects for increasing safety awareness within an organization, and by the way is also a great way of retaining employees. Laying out a clear development path(s) within your organization and encouraging employees to obtain industry certification or designations will help grow your safety culture because they will be able to visualize how their role impacts every other person at your company. The more decorated your team becomes and the prouder they are of their work, the more that your safety culture will thrive.

 

Preparing for Safety

Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. Nothing could be more true about safety. A strong safety culture is created intentionally by being prepared. That means proactive thinking must occur to set up topics for safety meetings in advance, investigating what new equipment or technology is available to help your team operate safer (think wireless communication headsets for your helmets) and installing a telematics system into your vehicles. All of those items are done in advance of an injury and accident. To begin preparing for safety, simply take a half hour to sit down and think about potential hazards that your team faces each day and create a simple action plan on how to minimize each of those hazards. Use your “toolbox” meetings to cover one topic a day.  

 

Written Procedures

Writing anything down makes it more official. Being able to provide an employee with written guidelines will solidify the seriousness of your intent. Written procedures give directions for handling difficult or stressful situations like reporting procedures for an injury or accident. Explaining the long term benefits of these written procedures to employees will take away the stigma of the extra work they may perceive comes with it.  

 

Other tips and hints

  • Take the time to look over your past mistakes – look at your written reports and see if there is a pattern that is leading to broken equipment, accidents in vehicles, accidents on jobs, etc. 
  • Having a “Safety Guru” onstaff is a great way to manage the safety culture. Often you’ll find an employee that is passionate about theirs and others safety and they can be the advocate you need within your organization.

 

Here at ArboRisk, one of our core mission values is to help each of our clients make sure their team gets home safely each and every night. Helping our clients create a safety culture within their company, whether it’s a one-man operation or they have numerous employees, is imperative to achieving that mission. A great safety culture will also help grow your business by attracting the right employees and in the long term will help to keep your insurance costs down. 

Taking the time to develop and implement a comprehensive safety program is the first step, but living and breathing safety within your company is really where you’ll see the results. Because developing a safety program takes time, ArboRisk partners with tree care companies to create personalized programs in a fraction of the time. For more information, check out our Safety Package and contact us today!

Hydraulics Safety

by | Aug 27, 2021 | Safety | 0 comments

Hydraulics Safety

Written by Margaret Hebert, Dawn Thierbach, and Jeff Thierbach

Arborists work with equipment utilizing hydraulics every day  – chippers, chip dump beds, stump grinders, aerial lifts, and the list goes on.  While accidents from hydraulic fluid leaks are rare, accounting for only 5% of all accidents within the tree care industry, they can result in serious injuries and even amputation.  

So before we begin to talk about hydraulic injuries and how to prevent them, let’s look at some stats:

  • The pressure needed to penetrate skin is only 100 psi. 
  • Chippers, chip dump beds, stump grinders, and other equipment arborists use daily can run at 4000 PSI or higher. 
  • Amputation rates for an injection injury with solvents involved are 50-80%.  
  • With pressures greater than 7000psi, the amputation rate is 100%.

High-pressure injection injuries occur when fluid under pressure is lost through a small hole in a hydraulic or other pressurized system and the pressurized fluid penetrates the skin of a victim. The injuries are characterized by a small puncture wound that can appear mild in the beginning, and they often get dismissed as minor.  Hydraulic fuel injection injuries, however, are anything but minor. In fact, they are considered a surgical emergency.  Hydraulic oils are highly toxic and they poison you and your body’s tissues.  Immediate treatment is required to save the patient’s digit, limb, or life.

So, what happens after a hydraulic fuel injection injury? Let’s use an injury to the hand for example. First, the initial “strike” feels like a pin prick or bee sting, is seemingly harmless in appearance, and is often dismissed as nothing serious. Underneath the skin, however, the injectant begins damaging tissue, and pressure builds up in the hand and fingers. Within hours, the fluid can quickly spread to all areas of the hand, wrist, and forearm. The built up pressure damages tendons, nerves, arteries, vessels, and muscles. Unless pressure is relieved within hours of the injury, the victim risks amputation from lack of blood supply.

Surgery is always required for a hydraulic fuel injection injury.  During the surgery, as much of the injectant as possible will be cleaned out, and dead (necrotic) tissue must be removed.  Typically the wound must be left open to reduce the chance of infection and any further tissue damage, and a return visit to the operating room will be required within 24-48 hours.

Properly training your team is essential for avoiding or minimizing the severity of hydraulic injection injuries. Training should include:

  • An overview on hydraulic pressure systems and basic functionality. 
  • A plan of action in case a leak occurs:
    • Immediately shutting down the machine as soon as possible to avoid leaking fluid.
    • Changing the hose after all stored energy has dissipated.
    • Hydraulic fluid cleanup and remediation.
  • A plan of action if a hydraulic injury occurs.
    • First aid treatment to include:
      • For pain management, if needed, use Tylenol.  Avoid Ibuprofen, Aleve, and aspirin since they are mild blood thinners and there’s some chance of internal bleeding.
      • Elevate the affected limb.
      • DO NOT use compression wraps, tourniquets, or ice.  All these increase the risk of amputation.
      • DO NOT give the victim food or drink since they will be needing immediate surgery.
      • Get the patient to a trauma center or hospital immediately!  A trauma center is recommended due to rapid access to a surgeon, transfer capabilities to higher levels of care such as hand or vascular surgery, and immediate availability of X-ray and CT imaging.  Early antibiotics (ideally within an hour) and early surgery (ideally within 10 hrs) are the keys to reducing the need for amputation. 
      • Inform medical personnel that it is a hydraulic pressure injury and provide them with the safety data sheet (SDS) for the fluid. 
      • If the facility does not have treatment capabilities, the patient will need to be transported quickly.  In one incident we are aware of, the patient was air-lifted to the nearest hospital that had the ability to properly treat the injury.
    • Notification of emergency personnel (911)
  • Emphasis on never using your hands to check for leaks.
  • Training on how to check and maintain your hoses regularly, with a frequency of at least once per week. 
  • Ensuring that replacement of old hoses occurs when the machine is turned off and stored energy has dissipated following proper lockout-tagout procedures.

Remember to keep the training fresh in your team’s memory by including it as a topic in tailgate meetings a few times each season.


If you need help adding in a hydraulic safety component to your overall safety program, enroll in ArboRisk’s Thrive Safety Package, to work one-on-one with one of our Thrive consultants. Together we all can get everyone home safe each night.

Distracted Driving and Road Rage

by | Aug 27, 2021 | Safety | 0 comments

The Dangers of Distracted Driving

Written by Peggy Drescher

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) stats show that while Americans drove less in 2020 due to the pandemic, there were still an estimated 6 million accidents and 38,680 deaths.  The main behavioral causes were impaired driving, speeding and failure to wear a seat belt.  Two causes on the rise were distracted driving (accounting for over 3,000 deaths last year) and road rage. We’re going to dig into these two causes in this article. 

Distracted driving is any activity that diverts your attention from driving. This includes talking, texting, eating and drinking, using phone, changing the stereo, etc.  How many people have you seen blow through red lights?  Chances are they were distracted by something causing them to miss the red light. –PRO DRIVING TIP – if you are first in line at a red light, when it changes to green DO NOT proceed through the intersection for 3-5 seconds and look both ways before you do.

Did you know that texting will take your eyes off the road for at least 5 seconds?  This amounts to driving the length of a football field at 55 MPH with your eyes closed!  Drivers using cell phones are four times as likely to be in a crash and about 1 of every 4 motor vehicle crashes involve cell phone use.  Those that are texting are 8-23 times more likely to cause a crash.

If you haven’t had a safety topic on Distracted Driving, now is the time to do so. During your meeting, discuss your company’s stance on cell phone usage while operating a company vehicle, because if an accident occurs on the job, it not only affects your business but also your employees and their families. 

Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA Dr. David Michaels states:

“OSHA’s message to all companies whose employees drive on the job is straightforward: It is your responsibility and legal obligation to have a clear, unequivocal and enforced policy against texting while driving.”

In addition, nearly every state has passed some sort of statewide law against distracted driving. There are plenty of resources that have sample cell phone usage policies, however, one that you could use as a reference is from the NSC.org inside of their Safe Driving kit.  

Now, to discuss road rage or just plain erratic drivers.  Road rage includes lane weaving, running red lights, speeding, tailgating, making obscene hand gestures, yelling verbal insults and even inflicting physical harm.  

I’m sure everyone has seen this before or perhaps even participated in any of these – have you ever been driving behind someone going 70 MPH and have them intentionally drop a piece of metal out of their window?  I have – and I am lucky it hit the bottom of my car but the sound was like a bomb went off.  What came out of my mouth was not very peaceful.  Besides it making me nervous to continue the 2-hour drive I still had to accomplish, I had bad thoughts about the driver for quite a while.  

If road rage happens to one of your crew during the work day what do you think that does to their performance?  I suggest having a safety discussion and ask your employees if they have any examples, I bet you’ll get some interesting stories to discuss.  

Here are a few ways to combat the urge to participate in road rage: 

  • Provide your crew with the resources to get the job done correctly before they leave the shop so they are not stressed about the work for the day.
  • Teach breathing techniques to use in difficult situations.  They truly do work!
  • Have all employees go through a defensive driving course once per year.
  • Investigate apps for cell phone blocking technology and safe driving

In addition, if you need help with incorporating driver safety into your safety program, reach out to an ArboRisk team member to enroll in our Thrive Safety Package and begin working one-on-one with our industry experts.  

Listed below are a few other links that have great resources for safe driving topics, free posters and even surveys that your employees can take to score their driving. If you need help with developing a safety topic on this subject, I would be happy to help.  Stay safe out there!

http://nsc.org

http://www.osha.gov

https://www.nhtsa.gov

GHSA State Laws – Distracted Driving

Traffic Safety Huddles

Road Rage Sheet

Improving Safety with Leading Indicators

by | Aug 26, 2021 | Safety | 0 comments

Improving Safety with Leading Indicators

Written by Eric Petersen, CIC

One of my favorite things about the tree care industry is interacting with passionate people from all across the globe who are trying to help get every arborist home safe each night. Sometimes conversations spark waves of momentum and begin to force change within the industry. I feel we are at the beginning of a new wave of momentum within the tree care industry when looking at how to prevent injuries. That new wave is being caused by using leading indicators to improve safety. 

While the concept of leading indicators is not new, it hasn’t been until recent years that I’ve heard people start to talk about them at tree care events. OSHA defines Leading indicators as “proactive, preventive, and predictive measures that provide information about the effective performance of your safety and health activities.” They are metrics that can be recorded and tracked prior to an accident happening. 

Just like a doctor will analyze your blood sample for irregularities to catch a future illness or disease before it negatively affects you and a quality control chemist will ensure the molecular compound of their product is just right, your safety committee can analyze certain metrics within your company to highlight future safety concerns, thereby giving you time to address that concern before an accident happens. 

In a recent TCIA Magazine article (Leading and Lagging Indicators), Bill Owen states, 

“Understanding leading indicators and incorporating them into a safety program balances a program and improves overall results by focusing on the behavior that leads to successful outcomes.”

Put another way – behavior first, results second. Building a safety culture around the proper behaviors will give you a better result. And the better result we are all looking for is to reduce or eliminate the severe injuries that continue to plague this industry. 

Common examples of leading indicators are: Safety meetings, Jobsite safety audits, individual and group training events, Jobsite Hazard Analysis, driving tests, Motor Vehicle Record checks, equipment inspections, etc.

When identifying what leading indicators you want to measure within your company, make sure they are specific enough to be easily tracked. A simple Excel spreadsheet can do the trick. Click here to download a free copy of our Leading & Lagging Indicator Dashboard, which was modified from Bill Owen’s example within the aforementioned TCIA Magazine article “Leading and Lagging Indicators.”

At your next Safety Committee meeting, have a discussion around what behaviors (leading indicators) your company can track to begin to highlight where future problems may arise. Create a goal for each of those behaviors and start to measure how your team is doing against the goal. When getting started looking at leading indicators remember, it’s okay if you adjust the metrics you’re using over time as the concept is a bit different than looking at lagging indicators (or using past incident data). The key is to shift your focus onto the behavioral metrics that ultimately help prevent injuries and accidents from happening. 

For more information from OSHA visit their webpage dedicated to Leading Indicators here.

Since ArboRisk’s mission is to get every arborist home safe each night, we’ve designed a specific consulting package to work one-on-one with your organization. Visit our webpage for the Thrive Safety Package to learn more. In addition to the Thrive Safety Package, all ArboRisk clients receive a Safety Culture Assessment that allows you to peer into your safety culture and find areas that need improvement.