CHICAGO — A drycleaning plant has a lot of areas that can pose risks if not respected. While some are more obvious than others, creating a culture of safety can help teams stay on the job and out of danger.
In Part 1 of this series, we examined where actual risk lives in a drycleaning plant, and explored how using the incident pyramid can stop minor hazards before they grow. Today, we’ll continue by exploring OSHA’s most-cited list and the importance of getting employee input on safety.
What Can Earn You a Citation
Hazard communication and lockout/tagout (the safety procedure to prevent accidental equipment startup) show up on OSHA’s most-cited list year after year, says Heath Robinson, CSP, ARM, head of safety consulting at World Insurance Associates.
“They’re the most cited because of required discipline, not just awareness,” he says. “We know what to do. We just don’t always adhere to it.”
Fixing this, Robinson says, comes down to being disciplined about chemical inventory and making sure management has the right paperwork for what they are storing.
“We think of lockout/tagout as a manufacturing issue,” he says, “but drycleaning machines, presses, conveyors and boilers all create exposure when employees clean them, service them or clear a jam. Once you fall out of the habit, it’s easy for that to become the new normal.”
Jon Meijer, director of membership at the Drycleaning & Laundry Institute (DLI), notes that OSHA’s approach isn’t always clear on the topic.
“OSHA is very broad. They don’t tell you exactly how to do anything,” he says, contrasting it with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules on solvents, which he calls far more specific. “So, every plant ends up handling it a little differently, and sometimes you think you’re doing it right and you’re not.”
The Riskiest Part of the Job
Delivery routes carry a different kind of exposure, and this risk is often underestimated.
For Mike Puppe, general manager of Tiffany Couture Cleaners in Las Vegas, his plant learned this firsthand: “One of our delivery drivers was bitten by a dog on his route. We got him medical attention, but he had bad bruising and lost a couple of days of work.”
At first glance, he says, the event looked like something outside of management’s control.
“The incident actually revealed a gap in our safety culture,” Puppe says. “Several of the other drivers already knew that dog was there, and that it was aggressive, and they hadn’t reported it because they figured, ‘What can I do? It’s somebody’s dog.’”
The fix was simple once the gap surfaced: a gate, a bell and a driver who no longer walks past the animal at all.
Robinson sees the same blind spot industrywide.
“Delivery driver safety is often underestimated because owners think of drivers as customer service employees rather than the company’s largest liability exposure,” he says.
He points to telematics as one way to close the gap: “It gives the owner visibility into how the driver is actually behaving behind the wheel. If they’re speeding, the system tells them in real time. If they’re braking hard or nodding off, it tells them to pull over. Driving is the highest-risk activity any employee has.”
Encouraging Employees to Report Things
A near miss only prevents an incident if someone says something, and this reporting is something leadership has to earn.
“Employees will only report something if they believe three things: that management wants to hear it, that reporting won’t get them punished, and that something will actually be done about it,” Robinson says. “The moment an employer fails on any one of those three, the program loses its value. You have to thank the employees who speak up, fix the problem quickly and let everyone know what changed.”
At Tiffany Couture Cleaners, that trust runs through one person.
“We have an operations manager on the floor who everyone is comfortable going to,” Puppe says. “They’ll report a hazard or an incident to her pretty much the moment it happens. But building that kind of culture takes a concerted effort. It’s not a ‘one-and-done’ thing.”
Meijer sees a generational shift helping the cause along.
“The younger generation is more likely to question things in their work environment,” he says. “If they’re working with chemicals, they want to know what it is and how to protect themselves. I think they’re just more apt to speak up.”
Come back Tuesday for the conclusion of this series, where we’ll make the financial case for safety, how to address employees who won’t follow the rules and how leadership can get started in creating a safety culture. For Part 1 of this series, click HERE.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Dave Davis at [email protected].
