Company: FairPoint Communications, Inc.
Location: Charlotte, NC
www.fairpoint.com

Company background: Founded in 1991, FairPoint Communications is the 8th largest phone company in the U.S.

People-Based Safety® is an integral part of FairPoint’s overall safety/loss control program. We’ve deployed it first to our regions that exhibited the most need (higher incidence of accidents, near-misses, workers’ comp claims, etc.) and are currently introducing it to the remainder of the workforce as time permits.

FairPoint is a people-based organization – we started as a group of small rural-Midwestern telephone companies, and though we’ve grown larger, our rural roots and values are still pretty firm.

Our culture is one of a large family and though we’ve just recently gotten considerably larger (three times larger) our cultural focus remains the same. People-Based Safety strengthens the message we want to send concerning our corporate and business safety culture. It’s not only smart business to have a strong safety culture but it’s also the right thing to do.

With our business culture firmly built on a base of strong ethics and “roll-up-your-sleeves-and-pitch-in” management style, People-Based Safety is a great fit. That, plus the inclusion of the take-it-home aspects, People-Based Safety really becomes a no-brainer for FairPoint.

I begin my People-Based Safety presentation with the idea that there have been three philosophies about safety over the years:

1. “Object-Based Safety,” where two supervisors grab you and stick you into your hardhat and it remains on your head until you bend over.
2. Early “Behavior-Based Safety,” where your supervisor threatens to fire you if you don’t wear your hardhat “because it’s the rule.”
3. Followed closely by later versions of “Behavior-Based Safety,” where you’re advised that wearing your hardhat is the rule because accidents cost the company money.

People-Based Safety is a much-needed giant step forward as it brings both the responsibility as well as the rewards of a strong safety program where it rightfully belongs – right into the hands of each and every employee.

People-Based Safety presents a view that safety is a personal responsibility for each of us – not only our safety, but rather the safety of our co-workers, friends and family, too.

All of the lectures, slogans, posters, contests and hard-hat stickers are useless unless your employees embrace the idea that they are responsible for their own safety and they have a responsibility to their fellow employees to be conscious of their safety, too (You ARE your brothers keeper, and he is yours!).

This benefits not only each employee by reducing their overall exposure to hazards and injury, but it makes good business sense, too.

Our Risk Management and HR departments use lots of metrics regarding Workers’ Comp filings and Accident/Incident data to quantify the effectiveness of People-Based Safety. Additionally, I promote an honest feedback on course-content and instructor-ability within two-weeks of the completion of the course.

We have incorporated suggestion-based changes to the PBS presentation and each cycle we find that more and more employees are eager to take the training (word spreads evidently).

I’ve even gotten a request to do a presentation for a civic group in one of the towns to which we provide telecommunications services – someone thought the message was worth passing on!

Reporting: Kevin Keefe, Corporate Safety Manager