Photo By Shannon Moeck | Contractors working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Middle East District conduct...... read more read more
In my 28-year federal career, first as an active-duty Air Force officer and then a Department of Army Civilian, I’ve seen a lot of “great ideas,” come and go. From new uniforms to new business processes that were going “revolutionize,” how things were done.
So when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) announced its new Corps of Engineers Safety and Occupational Health Management System (CE-SOHMS) I probably wasn’t the best person to write an article introducing it across our enterprise. But in my role as a public affairs officer, it’s my job and so, if I had to pretend to be a true believer, pretend I would. Until at some point, I realized I wasn’t pretending anymore.
CE-SOHMS is designed to change an organization’s safety program from compliance based to one where it is second nature to every employee. Rather than just following a regulation or checklist, the entire organization takes an ownership role.
CE-SOHMS is implemented in 3 stages, Stage 1) With the help of all employees, develop policies, processes and systems and ensure employees are aware of roles and responsibilities, Stage 2) all employees implement the polices and processes and utilize the systems “ownership”, Stage 3) continuous improvement of processes and systems through employee feedback. Organizations within the Corps of Engineers are assessed through validation and completing each stage is considered an achievement.
It's the stages of implementation that I believe makes the program successful. Because even if an employee is a skeptic like I was, they are still being bombarded with messaging on safety and the implementation of the new safety system as they strive to reach the next level of maturity. At some point, “going through the motions” to reach the next step becomes a real shift in their mindset.
It was a shift I wouldn’t have believed had I not experienced it.
During an event at work, I needed to put a photographer up on our roof to take photos. They weren’t wearing the protective equipment needed to be on the roof close to the edge and someone took a photo and reported it to the safety officer who chewed me out. I had a good laugh about it later and that was the end of it.
A few weeks later in a meeting, we were briefed on a fatality that had occurred where someone had used a riding lawnmower and didn’t put a roll bar in place. Something the safety director said clicked in my brain. That often it’s small everyday things we’re not paying attention to that can lead to serious mishaps.
We put the proper fall protection equipment on when we’re on an active construction site because it’s on the safety checklist. But we don’t do it when we’re on a flat roof at the headquarters building or when working on our roof at home because we’re not actively considering risk if there’s no checklist or other reason for compliance.
Once that clicked, once I understood how the new system was supposed to work, I began to see it’s effect throughout our organization. I realized that the safety officer wasn’t the one who had reported the unsafe conditions on the roof, it was a fellow employee who witnessed it and did something. Cultural change was happening.
Contractors working for us who previously, had very rarely reported “near miss” incidents began reporting them more often because the reports were viewed as a success and a way to improve rather than a failure.
After routinely publishing safety information in our command’s newsletter in preparation for our CE-SOHMS assessments I received the following email: “I was going to say that your section on Red Lights prompted me to think about that in the town I live in. They have implemented ‘no right turn on red’ on a bunch of exits from Walmart, etc. I would imagine that everyday there are probably 2-3,000 cars that run the red light in that way. At first, I was resentful and ran it as well, but now I adhere.”
Safety classes offered by our command that had previously been hard to fill now had waiting lists.
While the cynic in me questioned whether all of this was for show, “to reach the next CE-SOHMS step,” the believer in me realized it didn’t matter. Our organization had shifted from one where the safety program was managed by a program manager through compliance inspections to one where every employee took an active interest in reaching our safety goals.
As the Corps Chief of Safety and Occupational Health told me once, “I don’t care if our employees know what CE-SOHMS stands for, I care that they are implementing it.”
How do I know the CE-SOHMS program is effective? After reaching CE-SOHMS stage 3 maturity, we were recently evaluated and awarded the Army SOH Star which recognizes Army organizations for having a high commitment to safety. The process to earn the Army SOH Star is a long one involving multiple assessments with employee interviews and a deep dive into an organization’s culture. But the award wasn’t the measure of effectiveness. I knew we were effective when one of our employees asked the Assessors, “How do we maintain this?”
And if that doesn’t convince you, take it from me, a lifelong “new process, “cynic who felt the need to write an 800 word “let me tell you about this awesome new safety system” article for no other reason than I’ve seen it work.
| Date Taken: | 02.26.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 02.26.2025 15:50 |
| Story ID: | 491598 |
| Location: | WINCHESTER, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 43 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, USACE Safety Program Made Me a True Believer, by Joseph Macri, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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