A safety program in Facilities and Services under the direction of maintenance director Carl Wegel encourages workers to help prevent injuries and falls on the job and at home. The program, the Employee Protection Process, promotes awareness of ergonomics, behavioral safety, fitness and risk-management decision-making. The EPP’s principles are applicable to every worker, whether his or her job consists of strenuous physical labor or office work. Through the Division of Safety and Compliance, Occupational Safety and Health, the EPP is now available to all campus units.
During three one-hour training modules, employees learn about lifting safely, gripping safely, standing safely and keeping their spines balanced. Champion trainers, workers who have undergone 50 hours of intensive training, testing and qualification, lead the sessions along with about two dozen other staff members whom they’ve trained and certified in the EPP’s concepts. They demonstrate various tasks, explain how the body conducts forces and how people can use EPP techniques to prevent injuries to muscles, tendons, nerves and connective tissues of the skeletal joints.
“From the first time I saw the techniques that were presented by the consultants, I was very impressed,” said Jerri Wilkerson, coordinator of special programs in Occupational Health and Safety, who is certified as a safety professional by the Board of Certified Safety Professionals and holds degrees in industrial psychology and industrial operations management. “I’ve been in safety for over 30 years, and this is the most progressive, state-of-the-art approach to ergonomics that I’ve seen.”
Following each module’s introduction, the trainers and champion trainers coach and mentor other workers over a 90-day period, then the next module is introduced. “Notions,” e-mailed and hard-copy messages that are dispatched every two weeks, reinforce the concepts from the modules. The champion trainers and trainers meet monthly to discuss the program’s progress and any safety-related action items that workers have brought to them. The champion trainers, who are the EPP’s steering committee as well, review action items and EPP safety related concerns, which are reviewed by the management team along with elements for continuous improvement. Safety concerns outside the scope of the EPP are routinely addressed by the F&S Safety Committee.
“People are encouraged to look around in their environment and see what they can change to make it safer. And they’re encouraged to submit (those observations and suggestions) to management and the trainers,” said Judy Lateer, a communication specialist who has assisted Wilkerson with strategically marketing EPP. “It provides a real communication loop and encourages employees to get more involved and be more aware of what’s going on around them.”
About half of the 150 action items that workers have presented have been implemented. Among them: purchasing a ride-on line-striping machine, and supplying workers with ergonomic snow shovels, anti-vibration gloves for operating machines, and with brake carts for work near floor-level,
“Very few suggestions have been rejected outright, Wilkerson said. Although, “some potential hazards are complex and require long-range intervention and coordination with multiple campus units.”
A year-long pilot test of the EPP began on July 1, 2006, with about 850 employees in the Maintenance, Landscape Architecture/Grounds and Planning, Waste Transfer and Recycling, and Construction Maintenance divisions – groups that historically have represented the majority of workers’ compensation claims and injuries in F&S. Claims costs for F&S workers increased from $233,410 in 2000 to $606,541 in 2006.
“The goal was to reduce injuries by 25 percent the first year,” said Wilkerson, who co-chairs the steering and management teams. The F&S workers’ compensation costs decreased by 28 percent – or about $169,377 – during 2007, to $437,164, and while that seems indicative of the program’s impact, Wilkerson cautioned that workers’ compensation claims often do not mature for a few years.
“If someone identifies a potential action item, we’ll speak to them, look at the environment and the tools and see if there’s anything we can do to change the environment or their interaction with it to prevent an injury, then submit the related action item to EPP management for consideration” said Bill Jones, who is a mill shop worker, a champion trainer and co-chair of the steering and management teams. “It’s just great that management is willing to step forward and spend the money to prevent injuries. They really do care about preventing injuries.”
Unit leaders who are interested in EPP or in having ergonomic assessments of workstations conducted can contact Wilkerson at 244-7212 or jwilkers@illinois.edu.
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