Virtual roundtable: Building a safety culture that sticks

At Linamar, one of the bigger challenges in health and safety is what to do when injury rates are already low at most of the facilities, according to Melissa Gould, global vice-president of environmental health and safety at Linamar.

“We still have significant exposures to high-risk hazards such as lockout, machine guarding, mobile equipment, falls [and] electrical work.

“So [it’s about] making sure that while we recognize and reward positive outcomes from low injury rates, that we stay focused on those high-risk hazards, that we have good systems in place to monitor those and make sure we have good controls in place.”

Gould was one of three senior HR leaders participating recently in a virtual roundtable on health and safety with Canadian HR Reporter, which also featured Sam Altobello, national director of environmental health and safety at Burnbrae Farms, and Jay Traynor, director of people and culture at Kawartha Dairy.

The distinction between compliance and genuine safety culture was a central theme of the roundtable, which covered top challenges, effective health and safety committees, suitable return-to-work accommodations, the aging workforce and psychological safety.

The challenge of success

For Altobello, the top challenge at Burnbrae looks somewhat different. Labour shortages have driven higher turnover, which means more training is needed for inexperienced people — along with a more diverse workforce.

"In the past, it was predominantly English, but now we have to consider training whether it's English, French or maybe Spanish," he says.

At Kawartha Dairy, Traynor's challenge is one of preservation.

"Our biggest challenge is keeping and driving the safety culture we've built here over the last seven years to new employees," he says.

“It's really just instilling that importance and the urgency and ‘See something, say something’ and don't turn a blind eye to any potential risk or hazard.”

Traynor also stresses the vital role of leadership: "Safety comes from above. If the leaders don't believe in it, it ain't happening down below."

Making joint health and safety committees count

A key feature of safety-sensitive workplaces is the joint health and safety committee — a legal requirement in most Canadian workplaces — and all three leaders have strategies for ensuring their committees add genuine value rather than just satisfy an obligation.

At Kawartha Dairy, committee membership is treated as a distinction rather than a default.

"It's a prestigious position in our company," says Traynor. "It's an invite-type situation and you typically go after the influential people on the floors that aren't afraid to take on challenges and chase down issues."

The committee's work is reviewed monthly with a CEO who is quick to act, he says: "Even if it’s out of budget, if it's a safety concern, it's getting highlighted and we don't put Band-Aid solutions on anything, it's a 100-year fixed mentality."

The committee also runs a safety month each year, which is educating, interactive and participative, says Traylor: “It’s a kickoff to remind people what’s important, why it’s important, how they contribute.”

At Burnbrae, Altobello uses annual training, participation in NAOSH (North American Occupational Safety and Health) Week, regular training and a rigorous audit process to keep committees engaged and accountable.

"I go to every plant and I audit, and there's a large component under health and safety committees — analyzing their minutes and making sure there's quorum and the people are showing up and there's corrective actions."

Linamar runs two engagement programs: a Safety Olympics, featuring five health-and-safety-themed games each year, and a "See something, say something, do something" program that gives workers recognition for raising safety concerns.

"Getting your joint health and safety committee involved in the promotion of that is another excellent way to have them show their value… so, making sure that your workforce knows that those worker reps are really their voice — it's one way to bring safety concerns forward so that they can be addressed," says Gould.

She also offers a useful monthly check-in question for any organization: "’What did my committee do to add value to make my workplace safer this month?’ And if the answer to that isn't clear, you can relook at what you've done throughout the month to ensure that that value is present."

Ergonomics and the aging workforce

With physically demanding roles and an aging workforce, ergonomics has become a front-line concern for all three organizations.

Linamar employs two full-time ergonomic specialists, and several of its health and safety staff come from kinesiology backgrounds, says Gould. There is also an MSD (musculoskeletal disorder) prevention program built around Ontario’s guidelines, and a key initiative is the ergonomic Gemba walk, a structured Lean management practice.

"They are going into facilities and they're proactively tackling a line or a job area to proceed proactively, identify risks before it becomes an issue," says Gould.

Burnbrae has used a software tool for assessing ergonomic risk in job tasks — to map its exposure profile across roles, says Altobello.

"We hired a student last year and that was his focus to take all of our job tasks and run TuMeke through it and identify what our high and medium and low risks are," he says.

The next step is marrying that data with actual injury patterns to see if there’s alignment and put controls in place. Job rotation, automation investment — such as robotics or automatic case packers — and monthly risk assessments round out the program, says Altobello

“Burnbrae is spending quite a bit of money to automate a lot of our job tasks which is obviously going to be quite helpful in the future.”

Kawartha Dairy works with a partner from the provincial ministry for ergonomic audits, according to Traynor.

“We have her come in with her team and assess on a quarterly basis ‘What’s happening with our new equipment? Are there ergonomic issues? Lifting transfer issues? Can we automate and, if so, how do we redeploy those workers?’”

The engineering department at the company is dedicated to understanding and minimizing risk to injury and exposure to repetitive injury, he says, citing the wear and tear on joints as people age.

"It's a daily part of what we do, how we do it. And that's why we don't have injuries, because we are proactive in doing and addressing them."

Return to work done right

Should workplace injuries occur, the HR leaders highlight the importance of addressing the root cause — and sharing what was learned across the organization.

"Every week at our business unit meeting, we discuss injuries that happened," says Gould, citing the importance of lessons learned. "We're not discussing personal information but the mechanics of the injury, what went wrong and how we can prevent that across the facilities."

All three leaders emphasized that bringing an injured worker back isn't just a claims management exercise — it's an opportunity to reinforce culture, address root causes and show employees that they matter.

Linamar's ergonomic specialists conduct suitability assessments to confirm that modified work meets an employee's restrictions. The company also maintains a modified work database, organized by type of injury, that supervisors and HR staff can access directly.

"We want to make sure that their work is suitable and safe," says Gould.

At Burnbrae, a third-party company manages claims across the country, meeting with Altobello's team every two weeks by province to track open files. And the in-house safety team meets with every injured worker on a biweekly basis to check in, co-create a modified work plan with the worker and their supervisor, and stay connected to medical progress, he says.

"It's not just, ‘Hey, go and do this’ — it's ‘OK, what are your restrictions, what are your capabilities? Here are some of the different jobs that we have’… to make sure that we're complying with their restrictions and their accommodation but, at the same time, they're part of that recovery process."

At Kawartha Dairy, Traynor stressed the importance of making modified work meaningful rather than manufactured.

"When we get graduated work, we made sure that we have value-added modified work because it's not just ‘Make up a job,’" he says. "Whether it's data uploads with non-competition, confidential information, work with the quality team on some trials and things going on the line — [we] make sure the value is there so the employee that's coming back to work feels like they're actually doing something and not just make-work projects."

It’s also about education sharing, says Traynor, in learning about the cause of injuries and how they can be prevented going forward.

Psychological health: the next frontier

Mental health has moved from the margins of health and safety conversations to the centre — and all three leaders are actively working through what genuine psychological safety looks like.

Linamar is formalizing its approach through the WSIB Health and Safety Excellence Program in Ontario, using the CSA guideline to develop a risk assessment tool calibrated by department and role, says Gould.

As part of that, the company has added mental health and psychological safety training to its general orientation piece, she says.

“You also want employees to feel safe to speak up if there's a quality concern, if there's production concern. So, I think having that open door policy where everyone has a voice, that's a critical component.”

The company also offers mental health training for supervisors, says Gould: "I've always said being a supervisor is one of the most difficult roles in manufacturing because you're balancing a tightrope of production demands, but also dealing with people."

Traynor says COVID was a turning point. The response at Kawartha Dairy has involved beefing up visibility for the employee assistance program.

“We have communication screens that are on all the time, making sure they're refreshed, making sure that there's some success stories of people that have attended that, without names.”

In addition, it’s about embedding empathy into leadership development, he says.

“By instilling that and walking the talk, the employees see that and they relate to it and they appreciate that… And if you need to go behind a closed door and talk to somebody, you’ve got that. It's an open door: ‘Come on in, let's discuss what's happening.’”

Altobello agrees that mental health is a newer area for Burnbrae since the pandemic, and safety professionals are still figuring it out in terms of “What are people’s needs?”

He describes the company’s approach as still evolving — part of a broader three-year health and safety strategy the company is currently developing. In addition, annual risk assessments have elements of psychological health and safety.

“We're getting kind of creative and using some of our communication boards, like TVs and monitors and stuff like that, to put up themes, whether it's healthy eating, whether it's mental health… a whole bunch of different aspects of wellness.”

It’s so important, says Gould, because you can’t have a happy and well workforce if you don’t have people who are physically well.

“And it’s hard to be physically well if you’re mentally not [well]… so, it’s important to provide that education and training to the workforce and meet people where they're at and do things as an employer to help support both the physical and the mental wellness.”