TRSA Summit to Emphasize Safety ROI
Continuing the effort to cultivate an industry of safety leaders and educate them in tactics that ensure employee safety is the paramount factor in designing and undertaking laundry work tasks, the Fifth Annual Safety Summit for textile services professionals will take place May 11-12 in Kansas City, MO.
Conducted by TRSA in cooperation with the CSCNetwork, the Safety Summit enables launderers to:
- Sharpen their focus on hazards to reduce workers’ comp claims, premiums
- Get ideas from safety industry professionals to enhance company practices
- Collaborate with others in the industry with a strong record of safety improvement
The Safety Summit provides guidance that launderers who have reduced injuries most dramatically in recent years need to continue their progress toward complete elimination of incidents. TRSA members lead the industry in improving practices. For example:
- From 2010 to 2014, all textile services operators combined had a 2.4% increase in days away from work, job restriction or transfer (DART rate), according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. TRSA’s surveys in that time indicate members’ DART has fallen 25.6%.
- Industrywide, the total recordable injury and illness rate (TRIR) hasn’t dropped; TRSA members’ TRIR is down 27.3%.
Members have taken advantage of SafeTRSA online training and other industry-specific TRSA resources to achieve this success and they have utilized the Summit to benefit from the insights of the leading safety professionals on the agenda who offer up-to-date solutions to all industries.
This year’s keynoter will be Tom Wojick, president, Renewal Group, Providence, RI, who will discuss balancing return on safety (ROS) with return on investment (ROI). Previously ahealthcare executive in behavioral medicine with a background in psychology, motivation and counseling, Wojick now helps consulting clients better motivate their employees to improve safety.
His TRSA presentation will emphasize how workforce and consumer safety drives product and service quality, workforce engagement and a positive company reputation. He’ll offer techniques for producing smarter, less risky, more ethical and better long-term results and discuss how ROS and ROI mindsets influence decisions affecting safety.
Other general session presenters include:
- Victaulic Co. Honored in 2015 by EHS Today magazine, this Easton, PA, pipe-joining systems manufacturer excels at protecting foundry workers and engaging them in continuous improvement. Bill Damico, the company’s health and safety director, will explain.
- DEKRA Insight. This consultancy’s presenter will be Carey Bennett, business development manager, formerly a corporate safety director who will articulate the need to combine behavioral and organizational safety concepts to build and maintain safety systems.
- Industry Safety Professionals Panel. Summit attendees will submit topics for this discussion when completing their registration forms for the event, to receive the insights of panelists (TRSA Safety Committee members) about safety issues in their organizations. Committee Chairman Russell Holt, Superior Linen Service, Tulsa, OK, will moderate, joined in this role by Bill Mann, TRSA industry affairs director.
Subjects covered in concurrent breakout sessions (requiring participating companies to send more than one individual to the Safety Summit to cover all these talks) will be:
- Best Fleet Safety Practices: Steve Bojan, fleet risk services VP, Hub International, Milwaukee.
- Preventing Trip and Fall Accidents: Fred Anderson, operations VP, Pilgrim Mats, Tucker, GA.
- Electrical Safety: LOTO and Shock Prevention: Bob Herzig, owner and principal, Herzig Engineering, Kansas City, MO.
- Big Mo—Driving Positive Safety Culture: Wojick.
To encourage textile services company participation, a 10% registration discount is available to organizations with three or more representatives at the Safety Summit. CSCNetwork-only members receive the same base price as TRSA members. Nonmembers of both groups pay 40% more. Learn more and register at www.trsa.org/safetysummit.