Safety culture is an important part of production, underlying the actual day-to-day conditions of a workplace. Drawing conclusions based on statistics or theory might be a mistake that can lead to major accidents and injury to personnel. At H.C. Starck Solutions, we are committed to embedding good safety culture at every level of our refractory metals production and supply chain, to safeguard our business from top-to-bottom.
Safety Culture: Critical to Our Best-in-Class Refractory Metals
Relaxed attitudes, perceptions, and values in production environments can affect how processes are actually carried out. These are factors that can be difficult to monitor and regulate, which means many workplace cultures involve safety standards based on how workflows are intended to run rather than how they are actually carried out. In challenging working environments, such as those involved in the production of refractory metal powders and components, such oversights can be costly.
At H.C. Starck Solutions, we consider our safety culture a key part of our overall organizational blueprint. It has proven important to our success in refractory metals spaces, enabling us to build from positions of strength to offer the best-in-class refractory metals worldwide.
Ultimately, our goal is to achieve a zero-injury climate, which requires much more than just managing lagging indicators like incident rates and lost time. It demands leading indicators. Employee observations, job safety assessments (JSA), near-hits, JSBOs, and more must be taken into account as part of the drive towards safety excellence.
Excellence in Refractory Metals Safety: Putting People First
How we communicate and orient our organization directly reflects our performance as a company, especially when it comes to getting on the front foot with our safety culture. As a change agent, H.C. Starck Solutions adopts a behavioral-based safety approach by collaborating through active engagement and sharing ideas. Continually engaging with our workforce allows us to measure employee perceptions towards safety in refractory metals production at the organizational, management, and program levels.
At H.C. Starck Solutions, we always strive to find new ways of engaging the workforce. Research shows that overall perception towards safety signage is low, and few signs, if any, are noticed. In April of 2020, we installed two 150-Watt LED projectors with a 90MM optical lens that project bright red and yellow “DANGER, DO NOT ENTER” images on the floor on each side of one of our articulating boom machines. These warning signs effectively draw awareness, and it is exciting to see the positive responses we are getting from employees in that area.
We are continuing to build on that strong sense of community by educating our refractory metals workforce and empowering them to get every job done the right way. By merging employee perceptions with an organizational perspective, we hope to foster a strong safety culture built on mutual trust. If you would like more information about how we are championing safety excellence in the refractory metals industry, simply contact a member of the H.C. Starck Solutions team directly.
