Episode 21 – Safety First: TRSA’s New Certification

Welcome to the TRSA podcast. Providing interviews and insights from the linen, uniform, and facility services industry. Most Americans might not realize it, but they benefit at least once per week from the cleanliness and safety of laundered, reusable linens, uniforms, towels, mats, and other products provided by various businesses and organizations. TRSA represents the companies that supply, launder, and maintain linens and uniforms. And in this podcast, we will bring the thought leaders of the industry to you.

 

Good afternoon, and welcome back to another episode of TRSA’s Linen Uniform and Facility Services podcast. I’m your host, Jason Risley, the senior editor of digital and new media at TRSA. Today, we’ll get a rundown of TRSA’s new safety and health certification with Rick Gerlach. Rick has 38 years of professional safety and health experience. In 2003, he accepted the position of director of safety and health with Cintas.

 

At Cintas, Rick led company efforts to eliminate workplace injuries and vehicle accidents and engaged Cintas 35,000 employee partners in continuously improving safety. Rick also led company initiatives to embrace safety and health as an important element of company culture and achieve and sustain safety and health excellence. Rick is now retired and a consultant for safety and health processes with RG Consulting LLC. Rick will fill us in on the details of TRSA’s safety and health certification and tell us how improved safety drives employee engagement and business success. My learning objectives for all of you today is to understand TRSA’s new safety and health certification program.

 

I will cover during my presentation the prerequisites that a location will have to meet in order to qualify or apply the certification under the program. I’ll also provide to you an overview of the process, including the timeline and logistics. At that point, I will switch into my sales pitch for why I think this is really important. And I’ll tell you before we get to the end, the importance is employee engagement and what that can mean for the success of your company. And the last thing that I will talk about in detail is the scope of the 3 management system elements that comprise the certification in which any location that that applies for certification will have to demonstrate to the certification review team that the location conforms and meets all of these management system elements.

 

So I want to start out with a little bit of Harrison of this new safety and health certification to the other certifications that TRSA currently offers to its member companies. One that I know that you’re all familiar with is the hygienically clean certification. This particular certification is issued on a plant or facility basis. Conversely, the clean green certification is a company wide certification. TRSA issues the certification to a company and applies to all company locations.

 

And the 3rd type of certification that TRSA currently offers is the certified professional laundry manager certification. This is a certification that an individual or business professional can, pursue, through TRSA. What I’m going to talk with you about today is this new safety and health certification. And like the hygienically clean certification, it is going to be issued or will be issued on an individual plant or facility basis. Now the neat thing about this program, and I’m really, a big believer in the OSHA voluntary protection program, is that this new TRSA safety and health certification is modeled after the OSHA voluntary protection program.

 

Some of you may be familiar with that program. Some of you may not. Won’t talk much more about it, but, basically, it is a recognition program where OSHA recognizes individual company locations that have achieved safety and health excellence. Now the other thing that I wanna make sure you know is that the TSA certification does not include all of the DTP requirements. I went through and and I’m the the one of the people who was involved in the development of this certification.

 

And I went through the DTP star program certification and picked out those elements that I thought could easily be achieved by TRSAs member companies. Some of the more difficult ones are were not included into the TRSA program, but the goal is to facilitate any TRSA member company location that applies to this certification. That if they achieve it or once they achieve it, it will position them, that location, to pursue at a later time the formal VPP star certification. So talk a little bit about the prerequisites applicable to this certification. The first is that the in order for the location to apply for this certification, it’s it’s really, really important that that location, that laundry, linen processing facility, has an effective OSHA record keeping program in place.

 

And the reason for that is that it’s it’s one of the criteria that OSHA looks at whenever they are considering a location for VTT star certification. They look at the OSHA record keeping program because that is the program that drives the the the score sheet, if you will, the number of employee injuries that had happened on an annual basis at a location. The second prerequisite is that the the member company must be an active participant in the TRSA safety survey. This is something that TRSA sends out to all of its member companies every year, and it is a, data gathering effort whereby TRSA member companies voluntarily disclose on a confidential basis to a consultant hired by TRSA to collect injury and illness data from the member companies and then publish the TRSA safety survey. So it’s important that any location that’s interested in the safety and health certification be an active participant in the TRSA safety survey.

 

Last prerequisite is that the location that it’s applying for certification under the GRSA program must have an OSHA total recordable incident rate that’s less than or equal to the industry average rates published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, every fall in the fall of every year. To illustrate what I’m talking about, what I show on this slide is the Bureau of Labor Statistics data for 2017. That’s the latest year for which we have government data on injury rates in the various industries in the United States. And the way I’ve broken it down in this slide is that all operating member companies of t r TRSA fall under the North American industrial classification system code of 81233. In 2017, if you take linen plants and uniform plants in in the country, the government has determined that the average injury rate was 5.1.

 

Linen plants had a slightly higher rate of 5.8. Uniform plants in 2017 had a, significantly lower rate of 4.5. So if you’re a linen plant and you’re applying for certification, you’re going to have to have an injury rate equal to or below 5.8. If you’re a uniform plant, it’ll have to be equal to or below 4.5. Okay.

 

How this will work is that we’ve we’re we’ve created what we’re calling a certification review team that’ll actually go out and do the audits. And this team will first review an applicant location’s written safety and health programs. That’s an important first step in the process. But after that step is completed, an on-site inspection will be scheduled, and an and an inspection of the buildings and equipment for hazards will be performed by the TRSA certification review team. The team will also perform an assessment of just how good a job the location has done in implementing effective safety and health programs.

 

It’s one thing to have it written down. It’s another thing to have effectively implemented that program at the applicant location. And then lastly, and this is important, and this is exactly what OSHA does, is that when OSHA goes out and does a VTP site inspection, they not only interview the location leadership team, but they interview approximately 5 to 10% of the hourly employees. The reason for that is that OSHA wants to see the or hear the perspective not only from the management leadership team, but also from the hourly employees that work at the location. And so we have built the TRSA safety safety health certification program to be operated in a similar manner.

 

I wanna quickly run through an overview of how the certification process will work. And the first step is that a member company will apply to TRSA for certification. TRSA will respond to that application by sending a a data form or an inspection checklist to the applicant location. The applicant location will then use that information to develop what we’re calling a quality assurance manual to document that the location, in fact, meets the program requirements. Once the TRSA determines that that is the case, the location will develop the manual that documents that the location meets the requirements.

 

And within 30 to 60 days of receiving the information requested by a TSA, we’ll turn that information over to QRSA. As I said, the certification review team will review those documents and schedule an on-site evaluation, and then that team, that certification will view team will visit the the applicant location. And I’m still thinking that it’s going to take 1 to 2 days. Hopefully, we can do it one day, but my experience with these types of things that usually takes longer than one day to to get it done. But the goal is to try to get it down to one day, if possible, by completing a very, exhaustive and and complete review of the documentation at the beginning of of the process.

 

So after that CRT certification review team completes their on-site evaluation, the the team will submit a report to TRSA, and it can go one of 2 ways. Number 1, TRSA will approve the location for the safety and health certification, after which that location will have to be recertified every 3 years. And that’s basically the way that OSHA does operates their VPP star program. But once you’re approved, you have to fill out a report once a year. And at the end of that 3 year period, the BPP side is reviewed.

 

The TRSA certification program is gonna work basically the same way. But once the location is approved, 3 years later, there will be a reevaluation and a reinspection of that location prior to, issuing a a renewal of the certification. The other option, of course, is that TRSA does not approve the location for the certification program and that there is an appeal process that’s very well defined in the safety and health certification document that TRSA is in the, midst of finalizing at this point. Okay. As I said before we started, I really wanna convince you that this is a good idea.

 

And I I think you think it’s a good idea because you’ve taken the time out of your busy day to to tune in today. But I really wanna dive into a little bit and give you my perspective on why this safety and health certification program is so important. And and I am a safety geek. I’ve been practicing safety and health for for almost 40 years now. And that is you’re going to get improved safety performance out of this if you achieve this certification.

 

But the the good news is that good safety performance drives employee engagement. And conversely, employee engagement drives business success. So the keyword there is engagement, sort of a two way street. The better in my opinion, the better a job the company does in improving safety in their workplace, the more the employees are going to appreciate it and the more they’re going to be engaged in the program. I said it’s a two way street.

 

My experience, the higher level employee engagement, the more that drives safety excellence. And and that employee engagement, safety excellence dynamic, in my opinion, drives great business success. That’s my opinion, but I wanna share with you someone else’s opinion. And I know you’ve all heard of Gallup. Gallup does surveys of all different types.

 

They’re often quoted in the media. And there is a report out there that Gallup authored in 2017 called the State of the American Workforce, and you can Google it. Just Google Gallup State of the American Workforce. It’ll pop right up. In fact, I think there’s a 2019 version, underway at this point.

 

But what this report looked at is this important element of employee engagement at work. And in 2,000,017, Gallup found that only about a third of US company employees could be classified as being engaged on a global scale. And Gallup repeated this survey, not only looking at the state of the American workforce, but they also have another document that looks at the state of the global workforce. And they found that the world’s best organizations, the best companies in the world, average an employee engagement score of about 70%. So what does that mean to you?

 

Well, the Gallup report said that the American workforce has more than a 100,000,000 full time employee. About a third of those employees who work in American companies are engaged. And this is straight out this is a quote straight out of the report. The way Gallup describes those engaged employees is they love their jobs and they make their organization and America better every day. At the other end of the scale, Gallup found that about 1 6th, 16 out of every 100 employees are actively disengaged, and Gallup describes those employees as miserable in the workplace in the workplace.

 

And what these employees try to do is destroy what the most engaged employees are trying to build. And in the middle, there’s about 50% of the employees who just show up every day, punch the clock. They’re not engaged. They’re just there. Maybe presenteeism is the word you’ve heard before, and and there that there’s about half of the employees who are just just there.

 

So a third engaged, a 6th actively disengaged, and in the middle, about 51% employees are just there. So as leaders, what does this mean to you? Well, if you look at it from the global perspective, Gallup’s global perspective, they were they found that, globally, 85% of employees were not engaged. See, in the US, we have about 67% that were not engaged. But, globally, about 85% of employees were not engaged or actively disengaged at work.

 

And Gallup calculated the economic consequences of this disengagement was approximately $7,000,000,000,000 globally in lost productivity. So I hope that is a significant item for you because one of the things that we’re all in the business of doing is helping our companies be successful. And if, globally, companies are losing $7,000,000,000,000 because employees aren’t engaged, that’s a big deal and that should catch everyone’s attention. The other thing I wanted to talk about in the Gallup survey is that when Gallup looked at the American workforce, they compared those businesses that they felt had the top quartile in of engagement to those that were in the bottom quartile in engagement. So they looked at the 25% that were the at the best in engaging their employees and compared those to the the bottom 25% who were least successful in in engaging their employees.

 

And what they found, not surprisingly, is that the businesses in the top engagement quartile had 70% fewer employee safety incidents. Now that probably doesn’t surprise you, and you would probably expect that. Right? But here are the other busiest benefits that Galton found when they looked at this engagement, item. 41% low in lower absenteeism, 40% fewer quality defects, lower turnover, 21% higher profitability, 20% higher sales, 17% higher productivity, and 10% higher customer satisfaction scores.

 

To me, that’s really, really significant, and I think it illustrates the key link between engagement and employee safety and business success. So I told you that was my opinion. I’ve also shared some information with you about the Gallup survey of American Workforce. I wanna talk with you now about another expert, and his name is Paul O’Neil. Paul O’Neil is, today is an 83 year old guy.

 

But in between 1987 and 2000, he was the chairman and CEO of Alcoa Corporation, one of the leading aluminum producers in the world. And this is a quote right out of Wikipedia, which I think is very significant. It says at the beginning of his tenure, it means at the beginning when he was named chairman and CEO of Alcoa, Paul O’Neil encountered significant resistance from the Alcoa board of directors due to his stance on prioritizing worker safety. You go to Wikipedia, search for search for Paul O’Neil. It’ll pop right up, and you’ll see that in his summary.

 

That he what he did when he became chairman and CEO, he said, we’re going to become the safest company in the world. And for a hot metal, industry business, that was a huge, huge, stake to put in the ground, despite there the resistance from the board of directors. When Paul joined the company in 1980 excuse me, when he was promoted to chairman and CEO in 1987, the company was making $3,000,000,000 a year. When Paul retired as chairman and CEO in 2 year 2000, he had increased top line revenues 9 fold or 900% from 3,000,000,000 to 27 and a half 1000000000. He also increased net income about 7 and a half fold from 200,000,000 to 1,500,000,000.

 

After he retired from Alcoa, he was actually named the 2nd 72nd secretary of the treasury under George h w Bush’s first administration. Well, I’m telling you this because Gallup believes that the the importance of safety of engagement and driving employee safety and other business results. Paul O’Neil is also a big believer. Paul was asked in 2018 to record a welcome video for those safety geeks like myself who were attending the 2018 American Society of Safety Professionals Conference. But I’m just going to summarize a couple of things for you.

 

If you want to be the best in the world at whatever you do, it begins with worker safety. And to me, that is really significant again because it’s one thing for a geek like me to talk about that, about worker safety, importance of worker safety. I think it’s another thing to see the Gallup organization focus on it and to also see that a very successful chairman and CEO of 1 of US major companies and a former secretary of the treasury talk about the importance of safety and how it is the foundation for everything that companies do. Because the tools and techniques and ideas that are necessary to create an entry free workplace are the same tools and techniques and ideas that are necessary to become the best in the world at everything that you do. It requires every person to be engaged.

 

So it goes back to my my initial thoughts on this that I shared with you, that employee engagement drives safety and excellence. Safety excellence drives employee engagement, and those two things together really drive business success, as you can see from the, the the data I shared with you from the Gallup survey. Now for a brief message from TRSA. Gather with top industry executives and emerging leaders to enhance information sharing and relationship building at this year’s annual conference. Begin with TRSA committee meetings, including 30 minute open discussion round tables on industry issues such as market and job specific and ideas.

 

Network and socialize at the reception following the meetings. Professionals from managers up through CEOs and owners are encouraged to participate. The management development program provides a day of breakouts and general sessions featuring subjects beneficial to leadership of all levels. Next generation executives, emerging leaders, general managers and other plant based management, graduates of EMI and PMI, owners and c suite executives will be inspired by keynote speaker Steve DeFilippo, restauranteer and author of It’s All About the Guest. Steve’s family has been deeply involved in the laundry business and he’ll bring that perspective as he shares the deliberate steps taken to transform his upscale restaurants into multiple locations.

 

During his presentation on mastering hospitality for business. Breakout sessions feature the best of the best top rated speakers and topics from TRSA’s range of programs covering communications, management, recruiting and retention, and safety and skills development. Close out the day by sharing experiences and networking at Wednesday’s welcome reception. Opening keynote Bill Taylor will rev up the audience with questions such as what separates us from our rivals in the marketplace and what holds us together as colleagues in the workplace. Here ideas, diagnostics and case studies and be guided to a new world of work and a cutting edge agenda for recruiting, evaluating, organizing, and retaining talent.

 

Receive a complimentary copy of Bill’s most recent book, simply brilliant. How great organizations do ordinary things in extraordinary ways following his presentation. Get informed on trends and get tips with general session topic, riding the digital wave with Andrew Littman, MIT Media Lab and co director of Digital Life. This highly animated, engaging presentation will translate the latest digital technology trends into clear, business ready insights that are effective in any industry. The closing keynote speaker, presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize winning author, Doris Kearns Goodwin, will discuss leadership in turbulent times.

 

Inspired by her current New York Times bestseller of the same name, Doris’ engaging and entertaining address will bring to life some of the actions of the most successful US presidents to provide perspective for today’s leaders and to underscore that the US has survived and even thrived through troubling times in the past. Receive a complimentary copy of this book following the keynote. Unwind with colleagues by participating in a secrets of old Boston scavenger hunt, A competitive yet fun small team activity for all conference attendees. The annual awards dinner will recognize and celebrate the contributions of top industry leaders with the presentation Hyatt Regency Boston Harbor is close to the Logan International Airport and offers free shuttles for your convenience. The city of Boston is a 15 minute ride via water taxi, Uber, or subway from the hotel.

 

Register by August 9th to save $100 on registration. Take full advantage of TRSA’s 106th annual conference package this fall in New England. View the full brochure and register today at www.trsa dotorg/annualconference. Now back to the episode. What I wanna do from here on out is to cover the content of the CRSA safety and health certification program, what you’re going to be asked to do if one of your locations applies for the safety and health certification.

 

The team will going to be look will be looking at the documents submitted by the applicant location with respect to the 3 major elements. And the 3 major elements are management employee management leadership and employee involvement and commitment, an element called hazard prevention and control, which, one of the differences that between TRSA and and DPP is that DPP has 4 elements. For purposes of simplicity, we we boil it down to to 3 for the TRSA certification program, and we combine, the VPP worksite hazards analysis section with hazard prevention and control. And the last section is safety and health training. So there’s 3 major elements.

 

Each of these major elements have subelements in them. Basically, it’s it’s 75% of what OSHA VPP requires from their applicants to get the OSHA certification is included in the TRSA, safety health certification program. And I’m going to try to walk quickly through some of the highlights of these three, elements so that you can understand what the certification program is all about. So the first element is management leadership and employee involvement and commitment. And the number one thing that the certification review team is going to be looking for during its on-site inspection is how well the management team is engaged in leading efforts at the the location.

 

You know, I’ve been in the unfortunate position of working or talking to other people who work for companies where if they had a safety title, safety manager, safety director of safety, and you ask leadership whose job is safety, they would point to that safety person and say, that’s his job or that’s her job. But, really, safety is the job of management, and what it’s fundamental to success and safety. Management leadership team has to be actively engaged in leading the safety efforts at the location. The the second sub element is that the company has developed and implemented effective safety and health policies, programs, goals, and objectives, and that safety issues are not just an afterthought, but are routinely included as part of the annual or semiannual, management planning and budget process. Managers, supervisors, and hourly employees are have to be held accountable for meeting their safety and health responsibilities, and management, has to be also focusing focusing on contractor employees.

 

Now not all PRSA member companies use contractor employees, but those who do, especially those who apply for certification under the TRSA program, must have an active contractor safety program that management is actively involved in in driving. I’m going to show you one of the differences between the OSHA VPP program and the TRSA program. The VPP program says that every location that applies for OSHA VPP has to be supported by a location or a regional safety and health professional. This is one of the ways that where we loosened up a little bit for the TRSA program. What we said for the TRSA program is that the location doesn’t have a safety and health professional, someone with credentials and experience and training in safety, supporting that location, that it can be another person with adequate training and experience that’s able to monitor and run the program as defined by the TRSA certification program.

 

That’s one of the differences between OSHA and, the TRSA program. Another key element, and what better way to engage the employees at the location than to have an effective safety and health committee. From personal experience, I I can tell you that when you give employees a chance to share their concerns and their input and their feedback on the safety program at a location, it really has just huge benefits. So one of the elements that we have under management leadership and employee involvement is that the location must have an active, effective employee safety and health committee. There has to be provisions management has to have made provisions for hourly employees to report work related injuries or illnesses.

 

We all know that’s important. There are concerns about safety and health hazards. And just as an aside, I’ve always felt that when if an employee brings a concern about safety and hazard to me, it’s not an interruption in my day. It’s not keeping me from doing something more important. It’s a gift from the employee.

 

They’re coming to management and sharing their concerns about safety and health. That gives management an opportunity to show employees how much they care about them by acting on that employee’s concern. And and so they’re not always valid concerns, but management leaders who take the time to to carefully consider safety concerns raised about employees, by employees, and and getting, informing those employees and showing them that they care about them by acting on those concerns, really, I think, is the key to engaging employees in the work. The other system that has to be in place is a way to, recommend safety health improvements. Some people call this a suggestion box.

 

I know that’s a little old fashioned in this day and age, but it can be effective. There are certainly other ways you can that locations can do that. Can give employees the opportunity to recommend improvements in safety and health through a mechanism that’s defined by the location. And then lastly, I think this is the last subelement under management leadership and employee involvement commitment, is that when workplace inspections are performed or accident investigations are subsequent to an injury are performed, it’s really important that management doesn’t keep that information to themselves, that they share that with the, hourly employees. Management must also ensure that employees, are aware of and have a mechanism in place that they understand the rights and responsibilities under the the Ocean standard.

 

And this includes not only full time employees, but often overlooked and sometimes not in a good way overlooked. Temporary employees have to be included in all the safety and health programs. Unfortunately, temporary employees and new new employees are often those who get injured most frequently. So now I wanna go into the combined hazard prevention and control and workplace hazard analysis, which in the TRSA, program, we just call hazard prevention and control. So management has to have in place a process for identifying, evaluating, documenting, and tracking safety and health hazards associated with both routine tasks, stuff that’s done every done every day at the location, as well as nonroutine work tasks, upset conditions, still, power failures, etcetera, a non routine work task.

 

Management has to have procedures in place that employees know about and can follow in the event whenever they perform their daily job duties and also during, a non routine or upset condition. Something that I think is really important is that those locations that are committed to employee safety and health are performing self inspections, and I think it should be done at least monthly. But for the TSA safety program, we are re requiring that a location have in place a an effective safety and health assessment inspection program, whereby the inspections are performed at the location and documented, by the way, at least quarterly. These inspections not only have to take into account the OSHA general industry standards, which apply to all commercial laundries, but also national consensus safety standards, such as those published by the American National Standards Institute, the National Fire Protection Association, etcetera. Even though safety is the main thing that we’re typically concerned about in a commercial laundry, there are some health hazards as well, the most common being noise and heat stress.

 

And depending upon the customer base, employees may also have exposure to toxic chemicals such as lead and arsenic. So, when the certification review team is looking at an applicant locations, do it conducting the on-site inspection during an application’s inspection, the team is going to be looking for focus not only on safety hazards, but also on health hazard. It’s important that when new materials or equipment are purchased and brought into the workplace or a new work process is introduced into the workplace, that management assesses the potential for a negative impacts on employee and safety and health. This is a key element of the OSHA BTP program. It’s something I think it’s really important that, TRSA member companies who apply for the certification also have in place.

 

And management also has to have effective programs in place for instant investigations and near miss reporting. And I think everybody knows, that near miss is is a misnomer. It really should be a near hit. If that’s when an incident almost happens, an employee is almost injured or and it’s important that those that kind of information be collected. Corrective actions that are identified through these investigations are numerous reports.

 

There’s gotta be a system in place to track those to completion. And, this is something I wanna make sure you you really understand, and that is that OSHA says that when we use controls for safety and health hazards, there’s a hierarchy that OSHA follows that, officially, locations are supposed to look at and explore and evaluate engineering controls first, then look at work practice and administrative controls. And finally, as a last resort, only then, according to OSHA, can, companies use personal protective equipment to protect employees from a safety and health hazard. So that’s something that we’re going to the the certification review team will be looking at when we do these on-site inspections. Has the company documented that they’ve looked at effective engineering controls, any work practice or administrative controls, and failing to show that be able to control the hazard with those then and only then relying on personal protective equipment, which is a fundamental a foundational, stone for, OSHA enforcement.

 

Any hazard controls that are identified have to be documented and addressed in appropriate safety procedures, rules, inspections, trainings, etcetera. And interestingly enough, when OSHA does an OSHA DTC inspection, they are looking for an effective employee disciplinary system that not only applies to hourly employees, but also to management employees. And you’ll find that if you ever get in the middle of an OSHA VTP inspection, OSHA will be asking you to share with them records that show that management has disciplined both hourly employees and management employees for not complying with safety and health rules and regulations. Another thing the certification review team will be looking for is effective emergency action and fire prevention plans in place, including drills, an effective preventive maintenance system in place, a system for selecting personal protective equipment, and, that the location has contracted with a occupational medicine clinic to that’s able to treat any injuries that occur, any non life threatening injuries that occur. And, of course, that doesn’t apply to an emergency situation.

 

There’s a there’s another, requirement in here that that addresses emergency situations, which is this particular requirement that employees are trained and certified to provide first aid and CTR to injured employees and to use automated external defibrillators. And lastly, I think this might be the last one, management can demonstrate that the records keeping system that they have in place complies in all respects with the OSHA record keeping standard. Here’s here’s, something that I wanted to make sure that you understood. Incentive programs are pretty popular things. We’re trying to encourage employees, to work safely.

 

What OSHA looks very negatively at are incentive programs that encourage employees not to report injuries. So OSHA would much rather see an an incentive program that employees are rewarded if all departments and all employees receive their training for a month as opposed to, you know, we don’t have a work a lost time injury this month. OSHA looks at those types of programs as encouraging employees not to report injuries. And so, we’ll if if a member company applies for the TRSA certification, the certification review team will be looking at any incentive programs that the company has in place. The last element in the, PRSA safety and health, certification program is the safety and health training element.

 

And we have identified a list of 20 topics that TSA is going to, want to review and make sure that any applicant location has in place as part of the on-site, inspection and also as part of the on the, pre inspection documentation review. As part of operating an effective safety health training program, management has to ensure that trainers are qualified to provide the training and that all new hire employees are not assigned to a job or task that includes exposure to safety and health hazards, unless they receive safety and health training first. But these are the 20 topics that GRSA, and the safety committee believe that any company that applies for certification any location that applies for certification under the TRSA program must have at least these 20 programs in place. A couple of quick FAQs that we’ve thought about. If during the on-site inspection, the review team identifies a minor issue or deficiency, the location will be able to correct that deficiency while the inspection process and before the inspection team leaves.

 

If that happens, then that issue will be considered corrected and won’t be part of the report to TRSA. Again, we talked about I talked about this early on as part of the flowchart. If for some reason a location that applies goes through the documentation submission, the review, the on-site inspection, and the certification review team does not recommend that the location be certified, there will be an appeals process similar to the other TRSA certification programs that the location will be able to follow. And this and this makes sense. Any TRSA member company that’s previously earned the OSHA VPT star program certification can be grandfathered into the TRS eight Safety and Health Certification Program.

 

As far as the the team structure, we’re still working on that. We wanna put together teams that, are independent and, have no conflicts of interest. We’re still working at that on that structure and the fees. The application inspection certification fees are still to be determined at this point. But but, again, I would just encourage you to seriously look at this.

 

If nothing else, get a copy of the certification document, that CRSA is in the process of finalizing and look at, you know, how does your location, how does your company stack up against what’s considered a benchmark for TRSA companies in terms of safety and health excellent excellence. And and I wanna thank you all for taking time out of your busy days. I really love talking to others about the importance of safety and business success, and I hope that many, many of your locations that apply to TRC for the certification in the future because it can only make you better, and it can only make you a safer company and a better company in the long run. If you have further questions about TRSA’s safety and health certification, contact Angela Freeman, TRSA’s manager of certification programs at afreeman@trsa.org. That’s afreeman attrsa.org.

 

If you’d like to see the slides from today’s episode, visit t r s a’s on demand learning centeratwww.trsa.org/ondemand, and search for TRSA’s new safety and health certification. TRSA’s on demand learning center houses more than 100 webinars, videos, and other e learning courses. If you liked what you heard on today’s episode, please subscribe, rate, and review the show. We’re available on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. For more information on the Linen Uniform and Facility Services podcast, visit www.trsa.org/pod casts.