Ep. 485 Creating a Standard Operating Procedure for Work-Related Incidents
Rancho Mesa's Alyssa Burley and Vice President of the Landscape and Tree Care Group, Drew Garcia, sit down to discuss the creation of a standard operating procedure for work-related incidents, injuries and illnesses.
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Director/Host: Alyssa Burley
Guest: Drew Garcia
Producer/Editor: Megan Lockhart
Music: "Home" by JHS Pedals, “News Room News” by Spence
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Transcript
Alyssa Burley: You’re listening to Rancho Mesa’s StudioOne™ podcast, where each week we break down complex insurance and safety topics to help your business thrive.
I’m your host, Alyssa Burley, and today I’m joined by Drew Garcia, Vice President of the Landscape and Tree Care Group with Rancho Mesa. And, we’re going to discuss the creation of a standard operating procedure for work-related incidents, injuries and illnesses.
Drew, welcome to the show.
Drew Garcia: Alyssa, thanks for having me.
AB: Now, every business will likely have at least one, if not more, incidents, injuries, or work-related illnesses where they will have to document what happened, and may even be required to report it to their state’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration--better known as OSHA--and possibly even to their local law enforcement, depending on the incident.
So before these incidents occur, it’s a best practice to have a documented plan of action or standard operating procedure--also known as an S.O.P. So Drew, will you explain to our listeners what an SOP is in this situation and how it functions?
DG: Yes, yes I can. And Alyssa, this isn’t my idea. This is, you know, being able to work with such great clients you kind of get to see how they're handling certain things and this was something I saw one of our customers was doing and I really thought it was something that we could share because it's going to help in that whole injury reporting process, mainly for the purpose of making sure that the employee receives the timely attention that they need and that that process is completed the same way each time.
And so that's what you're doing when you're developing a standard operating procedure, you're creating that benchmark or that foundation for a process and then also an opportunity to improve upon that. When you look at work-related injuries, you could kind of break this into two different flowcharts because I'm very visual when it comes to what I'm looking at a process, what's my next step. So picture, and we've all seen it before, kind of a decision tree stemming from, in this case, a work incident or accident that gets reported; what are the next steps to follow for the employee? And then also potentially having a separate SOP for the supervisor or foreman so that they know what's required of them. And that might be more geared towards completing an accident investigation report, getting the appropriate information to the right people, does this go to HR, and then also maybe getting that information to a safety committee so they can review the incident and then circle back to provide maybe some appropriate training or retraining for the rest of the team.
And I saw one of our clients do this where they had both of those templates created and what was really nice, it's in English and Spanish and it really walked through the process that I could understand. I could be an outsider who was looking at it for the first time. I felt confident that I could complete what they were asking from me because it was so basic and so simple.
And I think sometimes that gets lost because injuries might happen frequently or infrequently and when you don't have a lot of practice or you have maybe a changing guard you've brought in a new safety person or HR support staff and they're trying to now learn and react at the time of an injury you know that's when you can make mistakes and things can drag out longer than they should. So developing these processes out allows your team members to feel confident that they're handling any situation correctly. And you can take that to the next level because there could be other reporting requirements like you mentioned; if something's an OSHA recordable, what are my responsibilities for that? If it's a serious OSHA incident, what are my responsibilities for that? Reporting it to your work comp carrier, all those things that people might have questions about should be answered on that document and allow them to work quickly through those scenarios so that the employee receives the attention that they need and then also the supervisors feel confident they're doing what is being asked of them.
AB: Yeah. So what are the areas that should be considered when developing a company’s workflow after an incident, injury or illness? I know you kind of mentioned some of those things, but will you kind of walk through what you think should be included?
DG: This is where I think it can be open to interpretation for the business because everyone kind of does have their own model and I'm speaking to the landscape industry, tree care industry right now. And if you're working off of a branch model where you've got multiple locations kind of divvied up to a branch manager who's kind of handling the business as like the franchise model, you might have a different way of reporting versus if you just have a single location and everything is a little bit more controlled.
So I think based on your operations--and maybe the way that you go about either you looking at an incident from a triage perspective, you could be utilizing things like telephonic injury triage, maybe some onsite evaluation might be a part of your protocol. So I don't think there's an absolute for anybody making it work for them is super important. But I would really consider separating two different flow charts. One for the employee so that we can make sure that it's appropriately followed and then also one for that supervisor so that they can get the information to the right parties so that that incident can be circled out in a timely manner.
AB: All right. So you know you're looking at things like, does this need to be included on the OSHA logs or, you know, do we need witness statements and you know what kind of follow–up reports we need all of that should really be documented in those flow charts, right?
DG: Exactly. Yeah, anything that you probably have written down as these are my procedures, maybe start just creating that bubble chart and that decision tree: yes, no. And that's going to lead you to the next series of questioning. That would be the easiest way to get started with something like this. And then reaching out to your safety partners, whether it's through your association, your insurance carrier, your insurance agent for some guidance. I think you can really build one of these quickly, and then you've got a good foundation for growth.
AB: Yeah, and as you were going through those, I kept thinking that our SafetyOne™ platform and HR portal can assist our clients in implementing all of those things that are included in this flow chart.
A few that come into mind are OSHA record keeping can be done in the HR portal. There's even a wizard that allows you to figure out, does this need to be on the OSHA logs or not? That's really helpful. And then also SafetyOne™ has built-in supervisor and witness forms. It even has online training courses that can be used before or after an incident once a root cause is determined. So the safety committee could determine, you know, what the root cause was and then find a training in the platform that, you know, can hopefully prevent it the next time from happening.
Now, what do you recommend listeners do if they are ready to start creating their SOP for work-related incidents and injuries and illnesses?
DG: Start with, you know, just maybe a blank sheet of paper and start working your way through it. “What's the current process look like and how can I make this a little bit more visual and easy to understand?”
And then I like your idea of having that through SafetyOne™ because ultimately, if you maybe customize this form, you're now centralizing that information into SafetyOne™. So if any adjustments need to be made, you're making that adjustment online and then sending it out into your account for safety one so that you don't have to make multiple changes; “Oh shoot, we've got this printed out in 200 different binders. Now we have to go into 200 binders to make that change.”
So I think centralizing the info so that it can be adjusted easily and that's not overbearing would be a good idea as well.
AB: All right, so Drew, if listeners have questions about their standard operating procedures or risk management in general, what’s the best way to get in touch with you?
DG: They can send me an email at drewgarcia@ranchomesa.com
AB: All right. Well, Drew, thanks for joining me in StudioOne™.
DG: Thanks for having me.
AB: Thanks for tuning in to our latest episode produced by StudioOne™. If you enjoyed what you heard, please share this episode and subscribe. For more insights like this, visit us at RanchoMesa.com and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.