Mission: Zero Awards 2016

“The ownership and the management team of FPS have found that a happy, healthy, safe employee is an employee that can have confidence,” said Dan Beuker, CEO and general manager of FPS.
FPS has been supplying the oil and gas industry with filtration products since 1987, progressing into manufacturing and cleaning the products. It’s based in Watson, Sask.
Introducing a culture of health and safety has been worthy, not just for the company, but for the community. Beuker compares developing that culture to airport security.
“At first it was really a pain. Afterwards we got really good at it,” said Beuker.
“We’re finding that it’s not imposing. Just like the security, once you get good at it you go through it and you don’t even notice it hardly.”
He knows the culture of health and safety is taking hold because it comes up naturally in conversation. It is the first thing they discuss in their meetings and coaching groups. They even discuss health and safety with customers.
For Beuker, the culture extends to the overall wellbeing of each employee.
“We have activity in [the exercise room] and people are learning to better themselves with conditioning and staying in shape,” Beuker said.
FPS also funds employees willing to better themselves outside of work, be it a safety program or a gym membership.
“People are talking about safety not only at the workplace and at home, but they’re also talking about health and that is what we really want,” Beuker explained.
Beuker is happy to see that when his employees volunteer – whether with the local fire department or as soccer coaches – they make health and safety a priority there too.
“They take this information back, or this culture, and suggest that maybe we should incorporate it there,” said Beuker.
He says having Mission: Zero in Saskatchewan makes it easier for his employees to be safety leaders because others are already aware of safety. That awareness makes them more likely to follow and participate.
At the end of the day, Beuker is happy with the progress at FPS, but acknowledges more can always be done.
“Are we where we want? No,” Beuker said. “But we’re finding some strong evidence that our culture is getting there and it can be maintained at a very easy, regular pace.”

“The transportation industry shares the road every day with all of our families,” said Bryan Richards, the CEO of the GTH. “It’s absolutely critical that we focus on safety from that perspective.”
This growing transportation hub, which services across Western Canada for inland transportation, is based in Regina.
“In terms of supporting the 750 to 800 employees that currently work on the site that are all involved in logistics and distribution, it’s really critical that we take a lead role in supporting them and their efforts on health and safety,” said Richards.
Regular meetings help them work at the highest safety standards.
“Internally we have our own health and safety committee and we’ve focused on the Mission: Zero program,” Said Richards.
“We include a safety message in each meeting to ensure the focus is always there from the very beginning to the end.”
But it doesn’t stop there. Enforcement is their key to a successful safety culture.
“We actually have our own bylaw enforcement officer on site to support the hub itself,” Richards said.
The GTH is closely intertwined with the surrounding communities, so it extends its health and safety culture to them.
It started a program called “Be the One” which helps promote safety from the employer, to their family, to their community.
“We try to get people to understand that they’re the one. Be the one to get home safely,” Richards said. “Be the one to not text and drive. Be the one to identify a potential issue.”
When driving through the community you’ll notice billboards advertising safety by the GTH.
“(It’s) additional focus with a targeted approach just to say we’re the GTH, we’re the Global Transportation Hub, we’re focused on safety, and we need you to focus on safety as well.”
The company also invested in an automated external defibrillator (AED) registered with the health region. Richards also offers the opportunity to his staff to partake in First Aid and CPR training.
Richards notices an improvement.
“What we’ve seen over time, due to that enforcement and due to that focus, we’ve actually seen a decline in incidences, in speeding and in weight issues with our commercial vehicles,” Richards said.
“We believe it’s really important to focus on that to alleviate some of those challenges.”

“The council of the Town of Big River sees health and safety as a top priority for their employees so that everybody gets to go home safe at night,” OH&S representative Sandra Gilbert said.
“You don’t want to see anybody taking unnecessary risks that might involve an injury that could possibly be life threatening or life changing.”
Northwest of Saskatoon, Big River is a town of more than 600 that thrives off of the agricultural, forestry as well as fishing industries.
Gilbert credits following safety laws and putting training in place in order to achieve health and safety standards.
“We try very hard to keep our employees informed of the changes and the things that they need to do to achieve what we want for them to make their jobs safer and easier to do,” Gilbert explained.
“Wearing safety vests, helmets and proper ways of operating machines…we make sure they have their WHMIS training and anything else that we can get for them to complete.”
Gilbert hopes to see the efforts of employees to stay safe at work replicated in their personal lives at the end of the day. Whether it be at the home or out in the community, the training is applicable for personal use as well.
“[We hope] they are putting their knowledge out there and keeping everyone informed and making everything a little bit safer for everybody,” said Gilbert.
“They’re starting to do things in a safer way because of what we mandated and put into protocol.”
Although it took some time, Gilbert has seen improvements in Big River.
“Change is hard for some people but we now see our guys using the tools that we give them,” Gilbert said.
“You see the contractors that work for the town on different things that our guys aren’t able to do, following the protocol that we’ve set out to keep everybody safe.”

For the Saskatchewan Association of Rehabilitation Centres (SARC), it’s about the personal wellbeing of every employee.
“Each and every one of our employees have loved ones that care about them,” said Amy McNeil, executive director of SARC. She uses one family as an example.
“[Kids] kiss their dad as he heads for work and they put their faith in our company that he will return home safe every day.”
“We need to ensure that he is well trained, that we have identified a plan for and mitigated every possible hazard in his work day so he can return home to them.”
Although their safety culture didn’t happen overnight, it’s now a part of the organization and every employee.
“A great deal of work went into getting us to think, act and model a safer workplace,” McNeil said.
“When you have a culture, you really don’t think about a culture, it’s just part of who you are.”
Although SARC follows all typical protocols, legislation and standard safety meetings, for them, growing that safety culture needed more. They dove into wellness.
“We’re always doing something about nutrition and workplace stretching.”
They also have a walking club. Those who participate are rewarded with a longer lunch time. They also set up their own garden for vegetables and herbs.
Staff at SARC have supported developing this culture.
“Initially I started doing a lot of that, but now our staff just naturally (is) always coming up with different ways to build on that culture,” McNeil said.
“It’s a beautiful thing to do.”
You’ll notice SARC out in the community of Saskatoon, promoting its culture of wellness. The most recognizable is their yearly safety symposium which started two years ago.
“We invited organizations that were community-based organizations,” McNeil said. “So these were non-profit organizations that were primarily working in the human services field.”
“But those are particularly organizations that are underrepresented and under trained…yet there’s also a lot of health hazards and a lot of other hazards.”
McNeil has noticed over time, the attitude of employees has improved.
“They understand it has nothing to do with statistics. It’s not anything because they have to do it or they’re going to be penalized for it. It means that they’re going home tonight,” McNeil explained.
“I never want to say sorry to his spouse, his children, or his mother or father, or to any other mother, father, spouse or child of an employee because we didn’t do enough to keep their loved ones safe.”

“I think our workplace safety is something that’s gone from something that we were expected to do or rules we were expected to follow to something now that’s part of how we work today,” said Mel Cadrain, the Timberlands Manager.
“When they get home, they’ll have the energy as well and the willingness to get involved in the community,” Cadrain explained.
“We have a fairly small staff here but we have people — I would say 90 percent of us — are involved in the community in some way shape or form.”
Many employees volunteer for the community’s fire department in Hudson Bay where Cadrain has seen his employees encourage a safer environment.
“They’ve been able to help increase safety awareness in that group just by taking the skills and the values with them to that group,” Cadrain explained.
Weyerhaeuser employees also extend their practice of safety at home.
“Whether you’re putting up Christmas lights, mowing the lawn or cleaning the gutters, I think we do that safer,” Cadrain said.
“When we do that safer, our families see that, they learn from it, our children learn from it.”
Employees and their families are recognized for their safety habit through a company program.
“Sometimes we’ll include a small gift certificate or maybe send a bouquet of flowers, that sort of thing, just to say we appreciate your support as well,” Cadrain said.
The journey for Weyerhaeuser has been ongoing for decades. The world-renowned forestry company that started over 100 years ago in the United States can now say that safety is key for each individual employee. But it was a long hard process to get them to where they are today. But they can say injuries have declined and positive safety habits have been adopted.
Cadrain says they recognize the value and practice of health and safety has to start from the top.
“Leadership has to be involved and walk the talk,” Cadrain said. “I think right off the get go, it’s got to start there.”

“The success of the program has come through the fact that it’s been driven by the team itself out in the field,” said Division Manager Bryan MacFadden.
As a multidisciplinary engineering and technical services consulting company with an office in Saskatoon, Allnorth Consultants Ltd. works with clients in several industries, including mining, oil and gas, pulp and paper, infrastructure, chemical and power sectors.
Safety has always been apparent for Allnorth.
“But as we’ve grown, the program’s matured in itself,” MacFadden said.
“We’ve developed a safety program by setting some goals for ourselves and supporting the team in the field to roll those initiatives out with us and help to drive those initiatives in the field.”
Interactions with clients helped grow Allnorth’s safety culture.
“What we’re seeing right now is our team is not only doing those things in the field from day to day for work … They’re talking about taking some of those learnings from our clients and from other people that we might be working with,” MacFadden explained.
Over the years MacFadden has seen improvements across the board. Their MIR (medical incident rate) statistics improved dramatically in the past four years. He says they are at the top of their industry.
The biggest improvement he’s seen in Allnorth is the automatic consideration of safety by individuals, including those in management.
“Our CEO did a safety share two weeks ago where he comes from a forestry background,” MacFadden said. “Typically in the past, maybe working out on the acreage, he may not have taken many safety precautions as he should.”
“But he talked about now he’s automatically going out and wearing full protective gear.”
He sees the safety procedures and processes being taken from work to home and into their community.
“Now it’s becoming, rather than a task for them to do, it’s part of their day to day behaviour,” said MacFadden.
MacFadden explains, using his own personal life at home as an example.
“So whether that’s encouraging my wife, who’s a carpenter, to make sure she wears her safety glasses and all her safety protection when she’s going to do a quick job out in the garage,” MacFadden explained.
“Or my father-in-law who’s a farmer, encouraging him to wear his safety protection when he’s out doing his things.”
Overall, he says Allnorth’s safety program comes down to one key idea.
“I want to make sure they’re going home safe every night to their family, or to their pets or whoever might be important to them,” MacFadden said.
“That’s what it really comes down to it for us.”

“I’ve seen employees get injured on the job. I even saw an employee die at work once,” Schramm, the president and CEO of Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) experiences, said.
These experiences left him two key ideas about the importance of safety.
“It’s so easy for somebody to get hurt, if not killed, at work,” Schramm explained.
“The second one is there’s no job that’s worth that … in the normal course of things, I can’t think of a job that’s worth people getting injured for.”
“That’s why we came, about a decade ago or so now, to saying the only goal we can have for safety is no injuries.”
There are highly hazardous areas at SRC where staff work with a nuclear reactor, chemicals, and bio hazards. In those areas, safe practices are second nature.
But Schramm noticed other areas of SRC needed improvement. For example, they were seeing too many slips, trips and falls.
“We eventually figured out the main cause of our minor injuries was just people being in a hurry,” said Schramm.
“We all believe that safety should come first, but there were parts of our company’s culture that tended to think that meeting our clients’ needs and deadlines maybe came first.”
“So, taking the time to do the job safely was coming into conflict with getting the job done on time.”
That was addressed starting in 2004 with a strategy aimed at empowering employees so they could put safety and occupational health as an overriding priority.
SRC was put to the test by this new strategy. It meant some projects got delayed. They had to charge more to be able to afford to do the work safely. That meant losing some projects and revenues. It also required spending to get the training and equipment needed.
But it was those actions that made employees believe their managers were doing more than talking.
“Somewhere were crossed the threshold where most of the people took to heart that we were really serious and that this was a good thing,” said Schramm.
“It’s hard to pin down that day, but there was a point where you could just feel in the way people talked about things in casual conversations.”
The next challenge was taking that beyond the workplace.
“There was a point when our employees were statistically safer on the job than they are off the job. Our first reaction … was to celebrate because that is a good thing,” said Schramm.
“Then our second reaction was to say, ‘Well, wait a minute. If they’re safer at work than they are when they are at home, (what) could we be doing to help with off the job safety?’.”
Not wanting to intrude on their personal lives, Schramm said SRC encouraged workplace discussions to find out what was wanted.
“We already had an employee and family assistance program to help both employees and their families for physical and mental health,” Schramm said.
That was “scaled up”. SRC offers annual influenza immunizations. It allows employees to use tools from work in home projects. Employee recognition gifts are safety-related, such as first aid kits or vehicle rescue tools. It also held safety contests.
Schramm also applauds his employees for the fun ways they’ve embraced safety, such as a fashion show showcasing personal protective equipment.

Promoting a culture that encourages that is her aim.
“Health and safety is important to us because it’s really important to create that culture of wellness and making sure that our employees feel empowered and inspired to be responsible for their own health and safety,” Koch, the deputy minister, explained.
“As a result, we’ll have happier and healthier, more productive employees.”
Koch looks at promoting the overall wellness of her staff, which starts with the senior members at the top levels.
“When you’re focused on safety as part of your culture, you need to make sure your senior leaders walk the talk,” said Koch. “You need to demonstrate your commitment.”
Koch has made available different safety supports like proper training and assessing high risk areas to prevent injuries.
“We’ve seen some great success in that we’ve had reduction in injuries and in accidents,” Koch said.
“We think we’re on the right path.”
Koch takes note of the progress the ministry staff has achieved towards its safety culture.
“Our goal is to see a 10 percent reduction in incidence over the year,” Koch explained. “So far, we’ve achieved a 55 percent reduction in incidences and a 37.5 percent decrease in injury time loss.”
“We’ve seen reduced sick days. That’s also been some of the measurements of progress.”
She sees staff taking what they’ve learned at work home.
“We want to make sure that they’re staying safe in their own farm operations and also in their own homes,” Koch said. “So being aware of, for example, of the things we need to do on risk areas like slips and falls in their own lives.”
Koch’s focus on the safety culture extends to wellness. Anything that promote an overall wellness for staff and the community is encouraged.
“Our focus [is] on wellness and talking about health and making sure that people are staying active, eating healthy,” Koch said.
“That’s how we think we’ve really started to impact the community beyond our Ministry of Agriculture.”
At the end of the day, Koch applauds her staff for the changes she sees in attitudes and approaches.
“Really we view this as an extension of our corporate culture,” Koch said.
“I think that’s why it’s become embedded in how we do our work here and that’s where we’ve seen the success.”

With that knowledge comes the responsibility of management to ensure that employees are working in a healthy and safe area.
Don Black, branch manager in Saskatoon, always wants to make sure his staff show up and leave work the same way.
“Sometimes guys leave and go so far as make sure you’ve got all your fingers and your toes,” Black said.
“When I go to a job site I kind of feel like we handpicked these guys to represent us. I feel responsible for their wellbeing.”
Black appreciates the support he receives within the company to promote a safety culture at his location. The company has more than 100 locations in Canada and the U.S., including Saskatoon.
“The entire organization has a great safety culture and it starts right at the top, right with the CEO,” Black explained. “They just truly believe in it and it just filters down from them.”
Black created an open-door policy for his staff and management. Staff are encouraged to express any concerns so they can be resolved.
“I’ve instilled a very approachable attitude and told them to listen to the concerns of workers and to make sure you follow up on it,” said Black.
“You can’t just listen to it and walk away … let them know we’ve looked into this and here’s the answer.”
He’s proud to see the staff taking the time to assess any situation that could potentially be harmful.
“Our workforce now has started to report near misses … it’s a leading indicator,” said Black.
“We have to look at what’s causing this near miss because we could learn from that.”
“We do what is called an FLA Training … a Field Level Hazard Assessment and the whole crew is involved.”
This allows the employees to identify potential hazards that could hinder them from working in the area.
Black sees how the safety culture at Safway has extended into the community. Even he’s changed how he approaches household tasks, like mowing his lawn.
“I think of myself personally 10 years ago and I would go home and cut the lawn in cut-offs and flip flops,” Black said. “(Now) I would never think of cutting the lawn without safety glasses and work gloves.”
“It’s just something that’s so engrained in my nature now.”
Every meeting Black holds always starts with a safety talk. It could be acknowledging an area at risk for slips, to an upcoming holiday that could have more people on the road.
“Usually our safety moments are more to deal with you know, it’s spring time and the wildlife is very active so be very careful when you drive at home,” explained Black.
“They’re more related to after work hours to continue on with this safety culture that we do develop at work.”
Black believes it’s possible to reach an injury rate of zero – the aim of Mission: Zero.
“If you think you can hit mission zero, I think you can,” Black said. “But if you don’t think you can, you’ll never make it.”