Pit & Quarry, July 2017

SAFETY REGULAR REINFORCEMENT Text messaging when employed the right way can serve as a highly beneficial safety tool BY KEVIN YANIK W ork orientations Tailgate talks Periodic seminars These are standard forums for leaders at aggregate operations to deliver safety messages to employees But what about smartphones Seemingly everyone now carries a smartphone which is capable of sending and receiving text messages Can smartphones play a role in making employees safer on the job The answer is an unequivocal yes according to Ryan Essex the vice president of asphalt aggregates and production at The Miller Group a Canadian based company with business interests in aggregate road construction and related areas Since 2016 the Miller Group has been connecting with employees across the company with daily texts that touch on a variety of subjects Many of the messages the company shares are safety oriented offering takeaways that employees can absorb before starting their shifts In the aggregate sector they like to get the message at about 5 in the morning Essex says If theyre having a tailgate talk at 6 a m the message inevitably gets talked about It stimulates thought to the reader but it also stimulates candid conversation in the field DEVELOPING THE PLATFORM The Miller Group didnt go down this alternate road of promoting safety alone though The Miller Group found a partner in Gordon McGuinty the president of Safety Messaging Prioritized whose company offers a specific platform to educate employees about safety McGuinty has worked in the aggregate and construction industries his whole career he says and he owned aggregate operations in Ontario Canada and Quebec Canada at one time But McGuinty ventured into safety technology in 2015 after acquiring 4RP Safety from Denis Alarie the former president of Leo Alarie Sons Construction who owned the safety technology platform After McGuinty acquired 4RP Safety the platform was modernized Denis made a platform with about 30 different categories containing about 1000 different safety messages Mc Guinty says But he was doing it all by fax McGuinty spent much of 2015 researching how to transition the platform to smartphones He rewrote some of the platforms original safety messages shortening them and conforming them into easy to read text messages During his research McGuinty realized safety messages would best be received as part of a broader platform Safety messages get you in the door but its the other messages we integrate in such as health and wellness leadership civility and humor that get people to read McGuinty says The beauty of the platform is that a companys employees all receive the same concise message simultaneously he adds Lets say you have 10 people on a work crew or 10 people in an office McGuinty says Theyre different ages with different levels of experience They will all read and get something out of that message differently than another person It levels the communication PUTTING IT TO USE For Essex the platform presented The Miller Group another mode through which it could communicate with employees The Miller Group identified several groups within its company including its aggregate group to test the platform The companys aggregate group was a good match for it in part because a number of employees are regularly on the move Essex says So the messages remote employees receive serve as another touchpoint to the core company We have a lot of mobile crews all over Canada Essex says They now have a daily connection a daily touch if you will from their management team We feel like thats really important In addition safety messages offer another indicator that the company cares about the well being of its employees Its nice to wake up and see a message about being safe today Essex says Then when they go to a worksite they can share 58 PIT QUARRY July 2017 pitandquarry com ISTOCK COM SHOTBYDAVE