Every day that goes by at Alexandria Industries, we look for opportunities to lead the way in our industry. This happens in every area in our organization. Whether we are researching the latest equipment technology to measure the strength of an aluminum-extruded product, or taking time to learn about disaster preparedness techniques, we set our sights on continuous growth to get us where we want to be – not just for tomorrow – but in five or ten years from now.
This forward-thinking mindset goes beyond making sure we achieve our target production volumes. It extends to all areas of our business, from the front office and shipping, to our information systems and automation technology.
The Choices We Make
In late 2015, we focused our efforts on where we wanted our health and safety programs to go in the future. For starters, we needed to determine a baseline of where we stood with the number of safety incidents. After assessing the types of injuries occurring in our facilities and why they were happening, our safety team realized that we needed to do something differently. Our current safety program was not going to cut it.
Though we investigated behavior-based safety training programs in the past, we were undecided on which direction we wanted to go with a new safety program. Should we develop our own program, materials, tracking systems, and training, or look for a ready-made, proven program?
We started to develop our own program, but quickly realized this would be a cumbersome and time-consuming process. We then knew we needed to find an existing, proven behavior-based safety program. After researching the pros and cons of multiple programs, we selected the Dupont Safety Training Observation Program® (STOP).
STOP and Make it Right
The STOP program has multiple parts. First, it reinforces the idea that leaders are accountable for the safety of their employees, while empowering employees to acknowledge that they have a responsibility to keep themselves and their coworkers safe. Our first lesson was to learn to make safe choices and a safe work environment part of our culture.
Featuring a three-part approach, the program focuses on self-study, field and application activities, and group discussions. It teaches safety concepts and skills-development, ways to practice safety habits in our work areas, and discussing the application of safety practices with our coworkers, focusing on peer-to-peer interaction and teaching.
The program has helped us to build our safety observation and communication skills, and led us to have constructive discussions among our leaders and their team members about safe and unsafe work practices. A key tenet of the STOP program is the belief that workers can prevent all injuries.
Through our training, we have learned that we can prevent injuries from happening only if our employees know how to identify, communicate and correct any unsafe acts or conditions. It is clearly up to each of us to make good safety choices.
The health and well-being of our employees will always be our top priority. In fact, employee well-being is one of our values. Our goal with our new safety initiative is to lead the way in enabling our employees to identify all unsafe acts and conditions, and not just at work, but at home as well. We then work together with our employees to resolve any safety issues.
We STOP to empower our employees to make the right choices when it comes to safety. We STOP to give our employees the tools they need to make safe choices. We STOP to ensure we are staying true to our core value of employee well-being.
At Alexandria Industries, we believe that everyone has the right to work in a safe environment. Our employees take precious time away from their families to work. We want to make sure they go back to their families the same way they came to work – safe and unhurt.