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You made it back to Warehouse and Operations as a Career. I’m Marty and I’d like to thank you for listening in to us again today! I’ve been in Nevada all week, just got back home this evening. I had plans to record this week’s episode from there and have a special guest sit in but, well, best laid plans, right? Things got busy and to be honest we just never had time to connect.
When you’re traveling for work you always think I’m going to do this or do that and there never seems to be enough time to even accomplish the objectives you’ve set out to get done.
We had planned on speaking about front line management and a few of those positions, or, and I guess along with some of the challenges of being a new manager. Him and I are going to schedule some time in the next few weeks and get that episode done but as I sat down tonight to produce something for the week, I thought of 3 recent incidents I had heard about and I wanted to share. Although they were presented to me as safety opportunities, I’d like to talk about them, but from a front-line management perspective. A bit about the responsibility end and where those responsibilities land. I’ve written down about 6 bullet points, lets breeze through them real quick.
So, the first one, and we’ve probably all seen something like this happen. Think back to what you did or was done about it in a moment. So, a floor supervisor witnessed an associate skating across the dock on a manual pallet jack. It’s fun, maybe we’ve all done it at one time or another. Come on, be honest! So, unbeknownst to him, his manager had witnessed the whole thing as well.
The supervisor had stopped the skater and, well, I guess you could say counseled him. There wasn’t anything formal, no written warning, he’d just verbally talked to him.
At the end of the day his manager called him into the office. He told him he had witnessed the event and was disappointed that the gentleman was still working with him or at the very least a corrective action had not been created with a few suspension days given to the employee. Well, the supervisor expressed that he felt any of that would be a bit harsh. The gentleman that was caught skating had been with the company for 5 + years, very productive and, honestly was one of his best employees. He had spoken with him, told him not to do it anymore, explained it was dangerous, and that he felt like that would be enough.
The manager asked the supervisor, did the employee know that skating was against the rules. The supervisor answered yes, of course, it’s probably talked about 5 times a year. Then the manager asked if the supervisor knew how much a broken arm, or wrist, with loss time and productivity cost. Or how bad the employee’s family would be hurt due to the reduced income he’d be receiving if something had happened? And then his manager explained something that really stuck with the supervisor. He pointed out that yes, this gentleman was a great employee, loyal and productive. But if he shows disregard for the safety rules and his companies’ policies, what kind of associate is he really. And how will others, especially new hires feel about all the culture of safety things you teach every day out there.
Kind of makes sense doesn’t it. Yes, he broke a rule, it was more serious than the supervisor treated it.
The supervisor, after rethinking it, and learning from his manager realized what he had overlooked. The big picture. The responsibility part of his job, and his responsibility for his employee. The following morning, he called his employee in, discussed how dangerous what he had done was and how it could have ended very bad for him. And they talked about how others would look at him as well. How the new hires looked up to him and did he feel what he had done was the light that he wanted to shine on others. The employee understood, and from what I heard felt a bit bad after they had talked through it. And he definitely did not understand the 3-day suspension and written warning he’d received along with a warning that any other safety violation would be grounds for immediate termination. But hey, safety is important, the most important part of our task each day. Being a supervisor, it is our responsibility to see and think about the big picture, the long play when it comes to safety.
This one is so obvious that I don’t know how it happens. Notice I said happens and not happened. I wanted to point out that we all could have been guilty of it and something like this happens every day.
So, an employee was unloading a railcar using a in place dockplate. A dockplate that has a lip that stays on the dock and a lip that extends inside the rail car and you can drive a forklift or palletjack across to load or unload it. This story involves a palletjack operator. This particular dockplate had a bent fin, or the part on the bottom that sits between the dock and railcar to keep it from sliding too far into or away from the railcar or dock. But by it being bent a little, the edge of the plate could raise up a bit. Just enough in this instance to stop the associates palletjack as he was entering the railcar. And I mean immediately stop the jack, throwing him to the ground and bruising his shoulder pretty bad.
Well, the investigation showed that 4 or 5 others knew that that fin was bent. They all had been using it that way for a while. And that 1 of those four or five had been the supervisor himself.
Now of course the supervisor felt pretty bad after safety pointed out that it was his, I shouldn’t have said pointed out, I mean that he felt pretty bad after safety reminded him that it was his responsibility to make sure he supplied his crew with the proper tools to do their jobs with. As front-line management we have to take on the responsibility of doing our jobs well and protecting our teams. We have to look and think ahead. We have to incorporate safety into every move we make.
One more really quick. A reach forklift operator was entering a freezer vault, his right outrigger clipped an empty pallet that had been left on the floor which slid into another empty pallet which then pushed a pallet that an associate was standing on. Yes, you heard me right, an associate was standing on an empty pallet. Now luckily the employee wasn’t hurt at all. but that could have ended much differently.
A manager was notified and of course started an investigation. Turns out that the supervisor on the floor had seen a lot of empty pallets being left on the floor and was going to talk to the crew about it after their next break. You know, when he could gather everyone up easily. By waiting it had almost cost his company and one of his team members a lot of anguish and time. As a supervisor we have to act. Waiting on any thought will only get us in trouble and cost our company money or time. If our thought has anything to do with safety, we have to act on it in the now. We cannot wait till the then. Safety has to come first.
All this is hard. We have our agenda too. We have to get the doors open or closed, the product in or out. It’s hard to, I mean we all know safety is our priority one, but sometimes it’s hard to stop our operation and make a point or present an example or cover an incident with our teams, we have a job to get done. But I have to ask you. Can we afford not too? Think about it!
Over the next few weeks I’d like to look a bit deeper into the roles of front line management, so if you have any stories to share or questions that you’d like us to get an answer too just shoot me an email to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com and we’ll get an answer or expand on a thought!
I appreciate you checking in again this week and I hope to see ya again next week! Until then Think, Act and Be safe at work and at home!