Safex leader finds satisfaction in helping firms keep workers safe
Dianne Grote Adams knows it takes more than health and safety posters to protect workers on the job. It takes engaged employees to keep a factory floor or a university lab safe. How do you get employees excited about OSHA compliance? A little laughter never hurts.
“Most people would agree that health and safety can be a very dry subject,” said Adams, founder and president of Safex. “We’re not afraid to laugh. It can be a very serious business, but you can also have fun while you’re learning about it.”
Safex employee safety trainings are interactive and often involve funny anecdotes from trainees’ minor on-the-job mishaps. The trainings and safety-support packages keep workers safe and employers OSHAcompliant. Safex certified professionals also dispatch quickly to construction sites or manufacturing facilities for industrial hygiene assessments and air quality testing, or to place contractors in unstaffed safety positions.
Workplace injuries cost employers almost $1 billion every week in direct workers’ compensation costs, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Employers’ indirect costs can run three to 10 times the direct costs, Adams said.
“That’s a lot of savings a company can realize when they get an effective program in place,” she said. Adams spoke with Columbus CEO magazine about her company and the value of creating a culture of safety in the workplace.
Q: Does safety training and preparation save businesses money in the long term?
A: Assisting with putting in a good strong safety program helps avoid injuries. That saves in workers’ comp costs, which is one small piece of the overall costs associated with worker injuries. If you look at health and safety as an aspect of business, what you find is as employees get more involved in safety, they become better employees because they’re more engaged. We’re all familiar with studies that show how productivity and quality improve when employees are engaged. Safety is one aspect that also improves productivity and quality.
Q: When do companies usually engage Safex for safety improvements?
A: When we first started, it was after a company had an experience that made them want to reduce their costs. But businesses are much more aware now that safety is a critical piece of business. Usually it’s not incident-driven anymore; it’s more about improving their business practices and realizing they need outside assistance in the health and safety arena.
Q: What might your typical client interaction look like?
A: It’s hard to say typical, because every client has a different need. But normally, they reach out because they think they have an opportunity for improvement. They might call it a problem, we see it as an opportunity to improve the process. We work alongside them. It could be assessing the extent of a problem. Perhaps they’re working with chemicals and they want to know what employees are being exposed to. We might assess that situation and then, once we get the results back, meet with them to review the results and talk about what the regulations are, then provide practical ideas how they might improve. Then we’ll work along with them to
make those improvements. Once the improvements are in place, we’ll do a final assessment to make sure they’ve met those opportunities to improve.
Q: Do you enjoy your work?
A: I do! People warm up to us because we allow our personalities to shine. We encourage people (in our training sessions) to participate. They’ll share stories that are serious, but also some stories that are health and safety related, but with a funny outcome. It does become a lot of fun to interact in that regard. At the end, you feel you’ve made a difference. If you talk to any health and safety person, they went into the business because they like people, they care about people and they wanted to help. Help, in this case, means: How do we keep people at work safe and healthy so they can go home at the end of the day?