MSCI Safety Innovation and Culture Improvement Award
Congratulations to our Minneapolis, MN divisions for their continued effort to drive safety improvements.
Each year, the Metals Service Center Institute (MSCI) recognizes and acknowledges metals organizations that seek new and innovative approaches in their efforts to drive safety improvement with the Safety Innovation and Culture Improvement Award. This year, we’re excited to announce that Olympic Steel’s Minneapolis, MN division was selected as a finalist – and THEY WON!
This week, a group of employees attended the MSCI Safety Conference in Schaumburg, IL where the award was accepted by Robert Erion, Safety and Project Manager at the Minneapolis divisions, and Tony Dominic, Director – Safety, Health and Environment.
What Did They Do
In the last two years, the Minneapolis divisions partnered with Mr. Bob Edwards to learn, implement and teach the fundamentals of the Human and Organizational Performance program, referred to as HOP. HOP fundamentals focus on the complexity of everyday work and include five principles that help to engage employees with their work:
1. People make mistakes
2. Blame fixes nothing
3. Context drive behavior
4. Learning and improving are vital
5. Leader response matters
The work the team does on a daily basis is tracked on a Continuous Improvement Board to visibly report the status of projects they’re working on and to hold the teams accountable for their progress. The teams have also incorporated HOP into the Central Region Lean Six Sigma Green Belt training program. But the most important implementation of HOP methods is the division’s daily interactions with employees.
“Using HOP methodologies in our day-to-day discussions with employees has been a real game changer in regards to helping improve the safety culture,” says Robert Erion, Safety and Project Manager for the Minneapolis divisions. “By shifting our focus from who did what wrong to what happened in the process has allowed us to learn and improve.”
Tom Sacco, Regional Vice President, says “We are doing more today to keep our employees safe than ever before, and this recognition is another indicator that shows our efforts are having an impact. Robert Erion has done an outstanding job driving all of our safety initiatives and implementing the HOP fundamentals into our culture in the past year.”
Read the full nomination here.
Other nominees include McCullough Industries and Olympic Steel’s Bettendorf, IA division. Great job to both locations for making great strides forward in their safety journeys.
Questions?
Learn more about the award at MSCI.org and visit Olympic Steel’s Facebook page for a link to the announcement.
Safety First. Always. And, it starts with me.
