This is my story

We all have a story about how it all began.

It was late 1995. I had recently commenced my role as the Quality Manager of a manufacturing plant, and had performed well in my first quarter with the company.

As the Quality Manager, I was measured on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which included the percentage of quality product ‘going out the door’, the defective material ‘coming back in’ and the material ‘requiring re-work’. My salary had an ‘At Risk’ component of 15% of my base wage, so I was very serious about hitting my KPI targets.

There was just one problem - nobody was keeping tabs on safety performance until an incident occurred in late October 1995.

One evening the operator of one of the production lines decided to make a change-over without following all of the safety precautions that he was fully aware of, and should have followed. He had done this many times before, saving him about ten minutes on every material change-over, which could amount to hours in a week. He was deemed to be an outstanding worker, with significantly higher output than other workers operating the same machine.

At approximately 9pm from the other side of the factory, I heard the operator scream. A number of workers rushed to his aid to find his forearm jammed in the machine. We could not free his arm from the machine.

Soon paramedics arrived, but they could not free his arm either. They administered morphine to ease the intense pain he was experiencing. A short while later the fire brigade arrived on the scene and with the use of the ‘Jaws of Life’, they were able to free the operator from the machine around midnight.

Despite numerous surgical procedures, the operator did not re-gain full function of his arm that had been severely crushed. He could no longer play cricket or ball games with his children.

The morning after this incident, our Managing Director arrived on site announcing an emergency meeting as a result of this incident. Quality Managers now had the responsibility to also manage Safety, but we had no training and it was entirely different to managing materials.

The birth of safety had begun in my workplace, but we had so much to learn, having begun with nothing. We continued to improve with time, but workers were still getting injured, as many would slowly slip back into their old ways.

It was five years later when it became personal to me.

A family friend died on the job in a construction workplace after falling ten meters to his death from an unacceptable sub-standard scaffold. This changed everything for me.

I enrolled to complete a tertiary qualification in Occupational Health & Safety (OHS) and safety became a performance indicator for every worker and manager in the factory, resulting in a sharp decline in injury rates. Only a couple of years later, safety was not an add-on or nice to have, but rather it was embedded in everything we did.

So what is your story? Have you been injured in the workplace or know of someone that has??

I can tell you that if you do not manage OHS in your workplace, it is only a matter of time before the inevitable happens. Someone will be injured or worse killed in your workplace.

No-one should be injured or die in the workplace and it is every business owner’s responsibility to ensure that this does not occur.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me (Jim Pashalidis) on 0410 603 609, or [email protected], or [email protected]  for an assessment of your workplace.

Further information to be found on company website https://australianohs.com.au on all the services provided.