Post-shutdown activity to bring attention back on safety
Hello all, I'm looking for some creative ideas and need your help.
Each summer and winter we have a two-week production shutdown (other places might call it an 'outage') where we complete PMs and do a lot of cleaning. Many operators don't work during those two weeks and lots of people go on vacation.
So I'd like to have some sort of fun activity to do on the first day post-shutdown to get folks re-focused on occupational safety.
Boring toolbox talks are not ideal.. and ideally it would be something that could be led by supervisors or team leads.
My only ideas so far are like, a hazard "scavenger hunt", where I'd hide signs saying "I'm a hazard!" posted around the workplace and have employees put in reports using our near-miss reporting system. Then give small prizes to the people who find the hazards first on each shift.
Does anyone have any other ideas/successful projects they've done to get folks back in the game, so to speak?
Comments (4)
Back in my foundry days we had such shutdowns. Usually the Christmas and New years weeks were shutdowns were one shutdown and most production employees would be on paid holidays. Yes back in the auto "Hay Days" of the 70s and early 80s we had two weeks of paid holidays in late Dec and early January. Normally, only very few production employees worked for furnace monitoring and repair, and all the the maintenance employees worked. They got paid "Double Time plus Holiday Pay (or Triple Time). Pattern and Die and Truck Mechanics (PITS) worked as needed.
We also normally had a Summer Shutdown the first two weeks of July. If we told the UAW by May 15th there would be a Summer Shutdown, everyone (except Maintenance) had to save two weeks vacation so we did not pay unemployment. If you did have to work you only got paid your normal pay and deferred your vacation. I remember as a supervisor I could not allow anyone to drop under 10 days of vacation pay until at least May 15 each year.
I remember very well, the December of 1978 management decided we had to keep making production over the Holidays. I was a supervisor and we were paid OT when supervising our employees over 8 hours a day. I worked solid Dec 1 to March 1. WE even worked 6 hour shifts on Christmas and New years Days (and the company catered in Turkey dinners for 2500 employees). With Triple Time I made enough money to put down payments on a new truck and our first home.
That all changed with the Depression in the Auto business of the mid 80s. Our employment also dropped from 3000 to 800. We never recovered above 1000 ees and never did get all the benefits and pay back we had before! Company went belly up 10 years later.
Maybe a big safety stand down before you guys get back up and running? That’s a tough one - always tough to refocus after a break. Love that you guys have those outages though