Aspects of Safety Culture in a Real Laboratory Manufacturing Environment

Once in an all-hands meeting, our safety coordinator announced that “the knives in the break room are sharp.”

While this sounds kind of stupid, it is actually an indicator of how good the safety program was at my last company. Being a biotech manufacturing laboratory with a broad catalog, we worked with acids. Bases. Flammable chemicals. Carcinogens. Mutagens. Teratogens. Toxins. Explosive compounds. Oxidizers. Liquid Nitrogen. Dry Ice. Cell cultures that carry viruses. All manner of blood and tissue samples.

And amongst all of this, our highest concern one week was making sure that no one injured themselves while cutting a tomato for their sandwich at lunch.

How did we get to that point?

Metrics Drive Behavior

I remember someone who visited our site once told a story about how they had seen a plant where the workers were given a bonus if no one had a safety incident for the period. Understandably, safety issues went unreported, and the ones that did get reported were more severe. Everyone wanted the bonus.

In our facility there were no prizes for reduction in incidents.

Instead, each team had a “safety cross” (I’ve published a template I made replicating this in the store if you’d like to download it) which they filled in daily. Each day was either “Green” meaning there was nothing reported, “Yellow” meaning there was a near-miss reported, or “Red” meaning there was an incident reported. We were encouraged to file near misses and rather than reporting “incident-free” days, we reported the number of near misses and incidents filed that month.

Management Review Drives it Home

Most teams including mine reviewed the safety cross and asked for any new near-misses or incidents first thing in the team huddle every day.

The safety coordinator would announce a summary of recent near-misses, incidents, and actions being taken at our weekly all-hands meeting.

Our department manager would summarize total near-misses, incidents, and actions at the monthly departmental meeting.

While this was a lot of repetition, it ensured everyone heard safety messages and that it was something very important to management, which meant workers prioritized completing tasks like filing near-misses quickly.

Action begets Confidence

The safety coordinator had a habit of trying to take some kind of action for every incident or near-miss filed to improve safety and hopefully avoid the safety issue in the future. While the actions didn’t always work the first time, their consistent effort was important because it showed the teams we were actioning every input of theirs.

Simple Reporting

Our near-miss and incident reporting was done using a Microsoft Forms tool. The QR code for the form link was posted on all safety placards through the facility.

Additionally, I added the link to my team’s digital copy of the safety cross and stored it in a central location on our SharePoint. The form automatically emailed a copy to the safety coordinator, and automatically emailed you a request to attach a photo if you checked a special box in the form.

The process was very quick and if the coordinator needed more information he could easily reach out.

Anonymity when Describing Incidents Publicly

I watched the process improve over time with regards to anonymity. Whoever was concerned about the kitchen knives surely didn’t want to be called out in front of the office, and they weren’t.

The truth is, each of us has a different level for what we consider “Safe” or “Dangerous” and allowing for anonymity allows us to report concerns or embarrassing incidents without fear of judgement. The safety coordinator then has a better picture of the whole facility’s safety level, and can decide what kinds of actions are appropriate.

Regular Training and SOP Review

You would be surprised how many workplaces do not carry out regular biosafety and chemical safety training. At our company there were annual trainings on slide decks of general information as well as smaller focused trainings (example: cleaning up biohazardous waste) where we met with the safety coordinator in lab for a hands-on demo. There were also SOPs published to our electronic Quality Management System that automatically triggered for regular review and sign off for ourselves and our teams.

A Broad Safety Mindset

Safety training and reporting wasn’t limited to the known lab hazards. It extended to things like ergonomics in and outside the lab and even took into account security issues, natural disasters like earthquakes, and train derailment. (Yes, there were train tracks right by the office). There was a team onsite who met and planned the actions for the company in each of these scenarios and it was published as an SOP.

Rehearsal

We had fire drills, earthquake drills, and even a few times got to voluntarily practice using fire extinguishers. We repeated these tasks every few months but they were never “grumbled about” by management. They were recognized as necessary disruption. Safety was #1.

Regular Gembas

If you’ve never heard of a Gemba before, the website Safety Culture has a great summary page here.

Basically, managers spend time where their workers are working, observing their work and looking for opportunities, often by asking them. Safety issues are often easiest to spot.

I once followed an employee on a Gemba into our walk-in fridge. I was observing the “picking” process where he found materials to do his QC test. There were several immediately apparent issues, one of them being that I noticed the shelving lining the walls in the cold room was not earthquake-braced (being part of the Cascadia fault zone on the West Coast, we are poised for a mega-quake, so nearly everything in the facility was either bolted to the floor or to a wall). I also noticed he had to climb up a short ladder and stand on top to get a very heavy bag down from above his head and get some material out.

After the Gemba I asked him if he could file near misses for the issues and we began working with the safety coordinator and other managers on actions.

Another example is when I went to the lab for a Gemba and noticed that shelves were sagging across all areas of the lab. Only being about a year old, this was concerning. Some of them weren’t even holding much weight on them but still showed signs of sagging. On closer inspection, it appeared that the shelves were painted MDF - not great material for a humid laboratory environment. They were absorbing moisture and would likely structurally fail at some point.

Again I simply filed a near miss and we were off to the races. We took mitigation steps while determining how to go about (and afford) replacing all of the shelving.

Dedicated Resource

I mentioned a few times that we had a safety coordinator. Their role was critical in ensuring issues were responded to in a timely fashion, documentation was kept updated, and trainings and onboardings were carried out on schedule.

I also mentioned that managers didn’t grumble about time spent on safety.

Both dedicating resources and fully supporting them are required to uphold a strong safety culture.

In Summary

Overall it was a great experience to watch the safety culture grow over the 11+ years I worked in biotech manufacturing. I hope sharing the aspects that made our teams successful in building a safety culture are helpful to you.

What are your experiences with safety at work? I’d love to hear in the comments.

Thanks for joining me,