Case Summary of Latex Paint Company

¶ … Paint Company

There has been an accident on the production floor at Latex Paint that has injured three men. As a result, Latex Paint must deal with a number of serious issues. First, the decline in employee productivity after the accident could become a drain on company profitability. Further, the company will be required to prove that it has met its obligations in relation to health and safety rules of the Union and OSHA legislation and may face substantial financial penalties if it has not done so. Liability for the injuries to its employees and damage to the company's reputation are a real threat, particularly if this company was not in compliance with health and safety standards.

Richards needs to take a variety of immediate steps to deal with the accident. To adequately prepare for the staff meeting, he needs to understand what happened and to the best of his ability identify the safety management system design or performance factors that contributed to the conditions/behavior causing the accident. He will also need to be familiar with the Washington Administrative Code, OSHA Rules and Regulations and Union safety rules and whether the company had followed them. More importantly, Richards will also be expected to find and implement methods to prevent the accident from recurring. To improve morale, he should consider publicizing the causes of the accident and the steps being taken to improve things. At the least, a better line of communication between management and employees is needed to address the situation. Finally, there's the issue of resource constraints caused by twenty percent of the employees being hospitalized after the accident that should be resolved in a way that is satisfactory to employees and management.

Safety training is not optional. The law requires that a company provide whatever information, instruction and training are needed to ensure, so far as is reasonably practical, the health and safety of its employees. The Director of Personnel has the responsibility for making sure that this happens. Before training can commence, the Director of Personnel must enforce the development of a clearly defined health and safety policy. The goal of training is then to make sure that all workers, both management and their staff, understand what the policy is and their obligation in meeting its requirements. While the training should remain positive, employees must be informed of actions that will be taken if they do not comply with safety policies. Training may need to be tailored to meet the needs of specific hazards associated with unique processes carried out in the organization. As part of training, employees need to know that the Director of Personnel is available if there are any health and safety concerns with either existing guidelines or corporate compliance with them.

A Personnel Director often handles disputes, grievances and industrial actions brought by Union Reps. Although a Personnel Director represents the firm and a Union Rep represents employees, the goals of the two can and should be similar with respect to the fair and proper treatment of employees. In fact, a healthy and collaborative relationship between personnel and unions does more towards realizing results than an adversarial position does. In the context of the Latex Paint situation, the Union Reps and the Personnel Director need to reach a consensus on why the accident happened and make sure that it is an isolated incident. This is in the best interest of Latex Paint and its employees.

While the drop in morale at Latex Paint is believed to be because the employees are being asked to pick up the extra slack, there could be a variety of other contributing factors. For example, the witnessing of the accident may have induced trauma that is making it difficult to work much less put in extra hours to compensate for the reduced workforce. And, a lack of communication from management to employees could be a source of worker hostility. The workers may feel that there is a lack of sensitivity to the situation and may have developed a mistrust of management because they were not being given all the facts. The hostility between supervisors and employees may be because employees blame the supervisors for the accident. Even worse, the workers may believe that they are being asked to continue working in an unsafe environment and that nothing is being done to resolve the problems.

Certain actions by Dave Richards could have helped decrease the drop in morale. He should have communicated with employees as soon as the accident happened, reporting all information that was available about the cause of the accident and expressing empathy for those involved. He should have notified the workers of services available for anyone that needed someone to talk to after the event and assured employees that everything possible would be done to make sure that another accident did not happen again. And, he could have reached out to the workers to solicit their perspectives on why the accident happened and the best methods for preventing a future incident. Some of the best safety improvement ideas come from employees who actually do the work. Depending on when the injured employees are expected to return to work, Richards needs to work with management to bring in the necessary resources to compensate for their absence.