Firm in our Convictions

I was promoted to business unit manager in a union facility for Armstrong World Industries. The relationship between management and the hourly employees had been strained for many years. It was so bad that on my first day on the job, there was a sign that said, “the plant will be closing in two months.” I wondered why they had so little faith in me. The shop steward told me, “Adam, even if we could trust you, we didn’t trust the person before you and won’t trust the person after you.” It was like they had given up on any form of leadership and stability.

I spent many hours on the shop floor, getting to know the employees. At least those who were willing to talk with me about something other than how horrible they thought management was. It was a very stressful time in my career. For the first six weeks of my tenure, we didn’t have a plant manager. He was relocating from Mississippi and hadn’t arrived yet.

When Bill arrived, he called his staff into a meeting to get to know each other and share our insights into the current situation. We talked about the strained relationships and non-compliance around safety and work practices. Bill listened to us carefully and asked many probing questions. Then, he told us our first priority must be to protect our employees through a consistent and strong safety program. We would go after this one requirement at a time.

The first safety compliance item we agreed to go after was the wearing of safety glasses. We had many processes that were dusty, dirty, and in some areas there was a risk of chemicals splashing on the people doing the work. So, why weren’t safety glasses already a requirement? The union proudly stated they had ended the requirement ten years ago. How was this even possible? How could management give away their rights to protect the workers, I wondered.

We couldn’t go backwards, but we could move forward. Bill met with union leadership and informed them we would be reimplementing the safety glasses requirement. The union argued vigorously, but Bill stood firm in his convictions that keeping foreign objects out of people’s eyes was more important than the additional burden of wearing the glasses. We held crew meetings to roll out the requirement. There was a two-week grace period, and then anyone who wasn’t wearing the glasses once they arrived at work would be placed in the discipline system.

Our supervisors hadn’t had to enforce this requirement for years and had looked the other way around many other safety violations. The staff agreed to be on the floor for many hours each day to help enforce the requirement and explain the thinking behind it. Early on, I received many comments similar to this one: “I hate wearing safety glasses. We never had an eye injury, and you can’t prove this will help anything.” My answer mirrored others on the staff, “I never want to wish I did something to prevent your eyes from getting injured if the unthinkable were to happen.” This answer wasn’t typically received in a positive manner.

After a few weeks, Bill called another staff meeting. We talked about how things were going. We shared the many complaints we received. Bill said, “Good. At least their talking about safety glasses, even though it’s negative. The more they talk about it, the more it’ll get into their heads.” This was an interesting approach I hadn’t thought of.

After a month and many grievances filed, employees were consistently wearing their safety glasses. Now, we were ready to roll out the next safety compliance requirement, lock-out. This caused a new furor. Lock-out was critical to preventing major injuries. Some of our equipment wasn’t even equipped to be locked out properly, so we invested a lot of money and resources to make the equipment capable of being locked out. The fuss over safety glasses subsided and the new enemy was lock-out.

Bill brought us together again and explained we would continue to roll out critical safety requirements in this manner, until we were truly compliant and protecting our workers properly. He told us the more quickly we brought a new requirement on, the sooner the prior requirement would be accepted (or at least absorbed). He was right. Over the next year, we were able to drive safety compliance while building trust of our true intentions – protecting the safety of our workers.