When employees arrive for their shift at Ainsworth Lumber’s OSB plant in Barwick, Ontario, they walk by a photo-laden bulletin board featuring many of their children’s smiling faces.  

Simple as they may be, the family photos serve as a powerful reminder that a successful plant safety program involves far more than monthly incident statistics and complying with government regulations.

Statistics do however play an important role in gauging a program’s success, and Barwick employees can be justifiably proud of their numbers: up until the last quarter of 2008, the OSB facility operated over four years without a single lost time accident.

Even for oriented strand board plants, which are relatively safe environments compared to sawmills, 50 months or 1.3 million man-hours without a lost time accident is a remarkable achievement within the industry.

Responsibility for Barwick’s safety program falls on the shoulders of Bob Swing, a former plant energy technician who took on the job of environment, health and safety manager in 2004 when Ainsworth acquired the Voyageur Panel plant from a U.S.-based consortium. Swing says there a several facets to the mill’s employee safety program, but it all boils down to what he calls “safety contact.”

“That includes pretty much anything that gets the employees engaged and involved,” says Swing. “Employee involvement is the most important thing. A successful program has to be driven from the bottom up.”

Central to the program is the joint safety committee. Duties are shared between five hourly employees with backups, along with several salaried employees. The chairmanship is shared between the two groups.

“With our safety committee, we’ve got 8-10 people engaged in safety all the time,” says Swing. And due to planned turnover, “when people leave the committee they’ll be fully trained when they’re out on the floor; they’re an advocate for safety and they know what to look out for.”

Preventing accidents before they happen is a top priority at Barwick.  Swing says plant personnel put special emphasis on the thorough reporting and investigation of any near misses, as well as the necessary training to carry out the investigations.

“These are the kinds of things you want to nip in the bud. If there are problems in a certain area, we have formalized procedures in place for reporting and investigation, as well as any followup work that might be required.”

In a depressed market, cost-saving measures also mean fewer contractors are used, so more of the repair and maintenance work falls on in-house crews, as well as other non-traditional roles.

The challenge at any workplace is ensuring that safe work practices are constantly in the spotlight, regardless of what external pressures are at play. A death in the family or trouble at home can preoccupy an employee, not to mention concern over job security or financial problems during a recession.

One tool used to keep safety front and centre is Safe Work Verification Forms. These forms are generally used for positive reinforcement when managers see an employee carrying out a task and using all the proper safety precautions.

Barwick’s managers have a weekly quota in handing out these forms, all of which serves to keep safe work practices in the forefront among the plant’s 150 workers.

“When you have everybody looking for each other, they’re concerned not because of ‘Hey, you’re stopping me from doing my job’. It’s more like, ‘Let’s make sure we’re doing this job the right way, because I know your family.’ ”