Suhas Baxi, MD, South Asia, Konecranes, is working tirelessly to ensure that not only his company employees, but also others, are making safety at the workplace a priority.
What does Safety Week personally mean to you?
I think there needs to be realisation of what your company stands for, and, hence, what you stand for. For me, personally, this organisation’s values, and one of the big values, is safety at the workplace, safety of our employees, safety of our people who operate our equipment not only at the workplace but also beyond their workplace.
As a leader, not only do I consider this as a value, but I also believe in it as an inbuilt value. We have been propagating safety within the company for a long period of time. We think, however, that we will truly be able to propagate the culture if we take this even outside the factory premises and it is the reason why for the last two years we have been making Safety Week an event. Health and safety is imbibed.
What are some of the safety measure you have undertaken at your own plant?
It is essentially creating a system and ensuring that accidents do not happen. An accident is a manifestation of a lot of things that should have been taken care of so as to avoid such a situation. If one does the math, an accident triggers loss-time injury and this by definition means where an employee takes a day off from work because he/she was injured at work. That’s a loss-time injury but before this injury could happen there would be have been a certain number of first-aid injuries. So our goal is to ensure that unsafe condition do not exist at the workplace. This requires people who are alert and observant, and that is our focus.
What are some of the points that companies neglect on the shop floor in regards to safety?
Companies neglect is not making safety a priority but making, let’s say, output a priority. For most companies, their quarterly and monthly targets and results are very important. Now I am not for a moment saying it is not important. But when you give priority to output over safety, it will have consequences in the long run.
What are some of the policies and laws that need to be implemented in the country to ensure safety?
I think it is less about law but more about creating, sensitising people. In the US, if an employee is injured at the workplace, the company is liable to pay him thousands and millions in compensation. In India, while there are no such rules, we need to create awareness about safe working.
So one the things that we are going to do is train crane operators around the country on safe operating practices, but their job is unlike tractor drivers, trolley drivers, truck drivers, etc., where they have a substantial level of awareness and education. Crane drivers and crane operators are most organisations are either permanent employees or contract employees. There is little training provided by companies and there isn’t a certification exam for them. So what we would like to do is create a network of organisations that provide this training, besides retraining and recertification. And since these jobs see a lot of churn, we would like to make sure that newer employees are also inducted in the training and certification courses.