A Wakeup Call

In 2001, I was the Business Unit Manager at a Vinyl Flooring Plant in Pennsylvania. Responsible for one of the four business units on site, I had a unionized workforce of 160 employees, three supervisors, and eight technical staff. My job was to turn the shrinking business around and keep my employees safe and productive.

With many layoffs over the years, the shortest tenured hourly employees had more than twenty-five years of service. They had seen many Business Unit Managers come and go over the years and were determined to outlast me. All three supervisors had been promoted from the ranks and were also of the mindset to survive until the next Business Unit Manager arrived.

This wasn’t the best situation to drive change, but we had to do many things better, and fast. One such change was to do a better job protecting the safety of our employees. We instituted a stronger safety program with improvements in the way employees interacted with and locked-out (an OSHA mandated program) their equipment. Although we were convinced that we were doing the right thing, we had major pushback from the union and even the supervisors, who saw all of the new requirements as a waste of time and effort. After much discussion, my staff and supervisors agreed as a team to be consistent in our safety message, approach, and accountability. At least that’s what I thought.

One day I overheard one of the supervisors telling his crew they needed to follow the new safety protocols because, “The company is making me do this.” Much to my concern and disappointment, this statement confirmed he didn’t believe in what we were doing. At that moment, I knew he would never hold himself or his crew accountable to keep themselves safe.

I couldn’t let this continue and immediately stepped in. I corrected the situation and sent him packing. It sounds harsh. There’s much more to this story. He had been demonstrating a pattern of subversive and destructive behavior for many months. This was the final straw. I was unwilling to put my employees at risk and knew a change had to be made.

Although firing someone is a life changing event for them and for those they work with, it ended up turning out fairly well for everyone involved. The remaining supervisors and crew took safety more seriously and the fired supervisor later admitted this was a wakeup call for him, as he was able to take a renewed commitment to safety to his next employer.