** 1 Year Since Our Last Lost-Time Injury **

Good morning to all I.D.I. employees,

It's time to pat yourselves on the back, but please don't get injured while doing so!  International Decorators has reached the 1-year milestone as it has been 365 consecutive days worked since our last lost-time injury which covered 252,855 total hours worked. 

It takes a lot of team work to reach a milestone like this.  It requires each individual to take a personal responsibility to work safe.  It requires each individual to look out for each other.  It requires employees to be engaged with safety and keeping safety at the forefront of every task that is performed.  It requires safety planning, safety training, field safety leadership, communication amongst each other and most of all, it takes high quality employees that care! 

If we can work 1/4 of a million hours together as a team without sustaining a lost-time injury, there is really no reason why can't we keep repeating that and work 1 million hours without a lost-time injury. We can't let our guard down against safety.  Safety is not something that you just do once and the task is over.  Safety is something that needs to be engrained, a second nature habit, something that we are just doing all the time.  Safety is a culture!

Our longest consecutive streak of days worked between lost-time injuries over the past 15 years is 435 days.  So, our next milestone date is July 26th, 2014.  If we can work up until that date without sustaining a lost-time injury, we will break our 15 year record.

We are asking each and every employee to help continue this streak and to help us get to our next milestone date of July 26th.  We are going to be having a very busy summer so we have a huge challenge ahead of us.  We are asking you to keep looking out for each other.  Take it upon yourself to not cut corners and to stop others from cutting corners when it comes to safety.  Be on the look out for unsafe conditions and hazards at our job sites and continue to report them to our Safety Director so we can help to make the job sites safer.  If you see someone doing something unsafe, please stop them for Pete's sake (sorry, I just had to) and explain to them that you don't want to see them get hurt for their own good and for the sake of their loved ones. 

Awesome job everyone on working together as a team to reach the 1 year mark since our last lost-time injury. 

If you have any questions about safety, please call our Safety Director, Peter Graham.  He can be reached at (847) 417-1689 or by e-mail at pgraham@4id.com. 

Have a Safe Day!

OSHA To Publish Company's Names in Newspapers for High Dollar Violations

Good afternoon to all I.D.I. employees,

Our Safety Director, Safety Pete, serves on Lake County Contractors Association's (LCCA) safety committee along with representatives from the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA).  Yesterday, it was announced by OSHA at an LCCA safety committee meeting that OSHA has a mandate where as they are to publish an article in local newspapers including company names of those companies who have received OSHA citations of $40,000 or more.  The reasoning behind doing so is to help deter companies from receiving safety violations with the overall goal of making companies stay on top of safety for the safety of their employees.  OSHA is out to embarrass companies publicly if they are not doing what they are supposed to as far as safety. 

As all or most of you know, one of our seven major safety goals that we discuss at every volunteer quarterly safety meeting is for our company to not receive an OSHA citation.  OSHA citations are not only costly for the employer due to the dollar fine that comes with it, but they are costly to a company in that many general contractors will not allow a company to even bid their work if a company has OSHA citations on their record.  Another reason this is one of our seven major safety goals is because if we aren't receiving OSHA citations, that means that we are doing things the right way by keeping in compliance and helping make our employee's careers safer for themselves and for their loved ones. 

This new OSHA mandate does not worry us as we feel we do things right when it comes to safety.  Our employees are skilled and pro-active when it comes to safety. We hold volunteer quarterly safety meetings which helps keep everyone in tune with safety and on the same page.  We just wanted to heighten everyone's awareness.  Our goal is to not be in the newspapers for working unsafely, but to be in the newspapers for doing things right and constructing buildings in a safe and productive manner. 

 

Have a Safe Day Everyone!