Every day approximately 685 workers’ compensation claims are accepted for work related injuries and illnesses (250,000 per year) in Washington State.
Every week there is approximately 2 work related deaths in Washington State.
Indirect costs of workplace injuries are unknowable but include loss of quality of life, personal financial ruin, and loss of productivity, morale, and profits.
It is a proven fact that organizations that take the time to create a written plan, properly select and train their employees, and enforce safe work rules come out ahead in terms of healthy, productive employees, lower workers compensation insurance costs and consistently high productivity for the organization.
This blog post addresses how New Era Staffing and HR Solutions address these concerns.
Safety Matters to Our Staff
Our team has been trained in the OSHA 10 hour course and we are an active member of the Evergreen Safety Council. We have over 75 years of combined knowledge of staffing, human resource management, leadership, and full cycle recruiting. All members understand the working climates of the industries we serve and understand the nature of the work including the physical, mental, and emotional requirements needed for success on the job.
New Era Staffing and HR Solutions is a proud member of the American Staffing Association and our recruiters are all certified staffing specialist and members of the Society of Human Resource Management.
Prior to any assignment our staff will provide our employees with details about their work assignment and will cover all general safety information and basic hazardous communication.
Our staff routinely goes through annual training on a variety of safety topics to stay sharp and to stay in compliance.
We maintain detailed records of safety incidents, accidents, and workers compensation claims. We work with our clients to ensure that they too have what they need to maintain compliance with regards to recording OSHA claims and the 300 log.
Safety Matters to Our Clients
We carefully select our clients and will work with only employers that have a commitment to employee health, safety, and wellbeing. We conduct site visits and use a safety audit form to assess risks and compliance. We verify that our clients have a written accident prevention program and have conducted job hazard assessments to identify required personal protective equipment. We will help clients that need assistance in any part of their safety program and we will help financially with a complete Safety Audit performed by the Evergreen Safety Council.
We strive to do annual site reviews to see if there are any changes in the work environment with regards to job hazards. We maintain a strong partnership with our clients in general, but more specifically when it comes to safety. We give feedback to our clients when we hear safety concerns from our employees. Our clients address these concerns professionally and completely. They treat our employees as they would their own with fairness, dignity, and respect.
Safety Matters to Our Employees
We have an extensive recruiting and placement process and it all begins with careful selection of our employees. We have the same available pool as all of the other local staffing agencies but we use an assessment tool called JOBehaviors at the very front-end of our process. The JOBehaviors assessment is a tool that prospective employees must take to be considered for employment. Candidates take a 65, paired comparison, series of questions that they identify with. All of the behaviors are good, but some lead to a more qualified candidate in terms of safety, reliability, courteousness, and willingness to do repetitive, physical work (we use other JOBehavior assessments for other type of work, but most of our work is in the Light Industrial sector where those behaviors are really important).
Candidates that pass the JOBehaviors assessment are invited to our office to continue the process. Once in our office they will take three additional tests including a Basic Industrial Skills assessment that measures English Knowledge, Ethical Conduct, Math, and Safety. We desire scores to be 80% correct or better.
Candidates that pass the three in-office assessments are then interviewed by our staff. Our recruiters are carefully assessing the candidate for culturally fit with our clients and balancing that with the needs of our candidates. Success in this process results in a job offer to the candidate.
Once the offer has been accepted we then will drug test, verify employment eligibility, and depending on client needs, perform a background check. When a candidate passes these criteria we proudly call them an employee and will review our Accident Prevention Program and review safety and attendance standards and expectations.
Our employees will then receive an email from us with a link to our Risk Management Center and employee portal where they will be notified that they have been scheduled for 3 safety training courses and that they have 1 week to complete. Failure to complete the safety training courses will result in being pulled off their assignments and they could also be terminated from New Era Staffing and HR Solutions. We pay employees to take the training at the minimum wage rate. The trainings include quizzes and they require that a score of 100% is accomplished. The three courses are:
- Hazard Communication including information on the new Global Harmonizing System
- Personal Protective Equipment (for all body parts, fitting, and maintenance)
- General Safety (including housekeeping, proper lifting and ergonomics, knife handling, and forklift safety)
Our Risk Management Center tracks compliance and records who took the training and when. This keeps us in complete compliance.
Safety Matters
We call this system and relationship between our staff, our clients, and our employees “Safety Matters”; because it does. The partnership of all three components makes the experience with New Era Staffing and HR Solutions truly unique. No other agency is as committed to employee safety. As a result our employees are better prepared, productive, and safer than any other agency.