Functional Area Awards

MAPP's leadership team knows that innovative and unique solutions extend through all parts of an organization. For that reason, in 2017, MAPP introduced its first functional area best practice award. Each year, MAPP will select one area of business to solicit best practices from. These solutions will be scored by a team of judges and the award given at national MAPP events. Submissions to these awards are collected, organized and disseminated back out to the MAPP network to encourage sharing amongst member companies. 

2018 Best Practices in Safety

This award seeks to celebrate, recognize and share best practices from MAPP members in safety. Winners of this year's award will receive an award and recognition at the 2018 Environmental, Health & Safety (EHS) Summit, along with recognition in MAPP's national publications. As with MAPP's Innovation Award, all submissions will be compiled and sent out to the MAPP membership for anonymous voting. Submissions for this year's Safety Award should generally align with at least one of the following topics: employee safety training, safety committees, safety audits/walk-throughs, emergency training, behavior-based safety, tracking/displaying safety metrics, equipment and mold change safety, safety communication or other innovative facility safety best practices.

Submissions from Safety Best Practices Award Winners:

• All-Plastics - Improve. Communicate. Reward. 
  

• IMPROVE: At All-Plastics there is a visible team commitment to health and safety practices. We have a 6S Program in place that is modeled after the Lean Certification Competency and Behavior Model. We utilize the Green, Bronze, Silver and Gold measurement systems to drive organizational safety practices, continuous improvement and awareness. Our plant is sectioned off into 10 zones to optimize workflow and efficiency. Each zone is assigned a Zone Leader and they are responsible for ensuring all 6S practices are followed in each zone daily. The zones are audited by team members weekly and logged by utilizing audit sheets. The audits and graphical statistics are visually represented on each zone board in each associated area of the manufacturing plant.

• COMMUNICATE: Quarterly 6S committee meetings are held for the designated facility team and open to all employees. The facility team discusses the “newspaper” from each zone which represents a list of things to be done within the specified area that would require investment or shut down. The quarterly safety record is also reviewed with supporting reports if an accident was recorded. Lastly, the facility team reviews all employee suggestions for continuous improvement and votes on the top three for award and recognition. There is additional regular facility-wide communication on health and safety through trainings, visual zone boards, safety signs, distribution of monthly Narrative and Matrixes, and staff meetings. There are standardized work practices in place that were developed by floor leadership to expedite learning, prevent mistakes and create a safer environment.
  
  REWARD: All-Plastics has an employee acknowledgement and award system in place to celebrate Safety successes. Employees are recognized and celebrate as a team with monthly catered meals for no accidents/ recordables. In addition, an Employee Suggestion Program is in place for team members to share ideas how to improve plant safety and streamline manufacturing processes for health and efficiency. The facility 6S team reviews all suggestions and chooses three top winners per plant, quarterly and annually. Winners receive cash prizes and additional recognition in front of their peers at the annual employee appreciate banquet. At All-Plastics we view continuous improvement and safety as an investment, not a cost.
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• Automation Plastics Corporation - Dozuki Tablets & Safety Walks

Automation has been conducting “Safety Walks” for a number of years. In general, the program has been effective in addressing safety concerns and keeping safety awareness in the consciousness of the organization. In 2016, Automation adopted the use of the Dozuki platform for electronic Work Guidance and QMS Documentation Control. Dozuki has proved to be an amazing tool for development, control, and presentation of work instructions, supported by extensive visual reference files, on 10” tablets at the production cell. As we became better acquainted with Dozuki we discovered that the platform was very adaptable to a variety of uses beyond Work Guidance. Before long we were using Dozuki to conduct orientation and safety training, to document productivity and set up activities, to archive historical data, and to communicate important information within the organization. Every employee has a Dozuki user
account with customized privileges, and has secure access to all of this from any device with an internet connection. Recently a member of our Safety Steering Team identified an opportunity to transform our traditional Safety Walks, through the use of Dozuki tablets, into an exponentially more effective and efficient program. This project is now beginning to yield concrete results in the form of:

• Data and statistics, that can be easily analyzed and filtered through both Dozuki’s Dashboard functionality and downloadable .csv files;
• Real time preservation, organization, and presentation of audit findings;
• Significant labor savings of over 50%;
• Enhancements to Steering Team review and timely response functionality;
• Ability to adapt and concentrate the focus of succeeding Safety Audits based on recent safety incidents or on concerns identified by analysis of the accumulating Audit data.
   

• Nicolet Plastics - Robust Safety Training and Safety Culture

  To help create an attitude-based safety culture, we feel that safety training is foundational. Safety training starts on day one of employment with new employee safety orientation and builds from there.  The Safety Coordinator conducts the safety training and the facility safety tour. The coordinator uses a New Employee Safety Orientation Checklist. The contents of the checklist are based on the position. The checklist covers all the important safety programs that they must know before initial assignment, Nicolet’s safety policies, accident/near miss reporting, how to use the intercom system for emergencies, and a facility safety tour. The tour includes:  where to find first aid kits, fire alarms, eye wash stations, exits, evacuation rally points, tornado shelters, material handling equipment areas, and a basic overview of injection molding machine safety.
  
  Annual Bloodborne pathogen, Lockout Tagout, and Hazard Communication training is conducted in house by either the Safety Coordinator or other subject matter expert. Also, there are annual drills that occur for emergencies. During Severe Weather Week in April, a tornado drill will take place on each shift; our annual fire drill takes place every June.  During these drills, the Safety Coordinator observes the event to see how the employees and emergency evacuation personnel are responding to an emergency.  The drills are timed and the observations are reported at the monthly Nicolet News employee meeting.
  Since it is not always possible to conduct all of our safety training in house, we will also utilize outside resources to conduct training on-site. One example of this is in 2017, we had our local sheriff department come on- site and conduct ALICE training for all of our employees. ALICE is a set of proactive strategies that increases the chance of survival during an active shooter event. The officers that conducted the training presented to all of our shifts.
   

  We’ve also had the company that manufactured and installed our overhead cranes conduct refresher training for our crane trainers, maintenance, production support center staff, and the Safety Coordinator. The training was on crane and rigging safety. These employees helped restructure the entire crane training program. The crane trainers conducted crane re-certifications for all of our current crane operators to make sure they were using the crane correctly and safely. If any operator did not pass the recertification audit, they would have to be put through the crane training program.
  
  
  
  
   

• Plastikos - Well-Rounded Safety Focus

We focused on reviewing our safety programs in 2017 and conducted hazard analysis. We also brought in safety consultants to audit our facility. This resulted in an overall reduction to our incident rate. We also implemented pizza parties for every 100 days with no recordable accidents and we also increased awareness of near misses and how important it is to report them.

1. Safety Shoe Program: A sample voucher is provided for all employees who were required to wear safety-toe shoes.
2. Communication for PPE changes were conducted during monthly meetings for all employees.
3. Lockout Tagout Information: LOTO procedures were added to each individual injection molding machine (35 total machines).
4. Every 100 days we go accident free we have a pizza party
5. An announcement was made during our monthly meeting for Jan. 2017 to announce 200 days accident free
6. Hazard Communication - GHS Standards: A complete inventory was taken of 300+ SDS sheets in January 2017. All outdated SDS’s were replaced with current versions. A complete facility inventory check was also taken. Outdated products were removed, and some products were replaced with consumer product grade replacements, where appropriate. Any products missing an SDS were evaluated for their relevancy. The products were either thrown out or an SDS was acquired.
7. Communication for the HazCom updates were covered during a monthly meeting for all employees in Spring 2017. Continuous updates are ongoing
8. Plastikos Safety Committee: Our Safety Committee meets once a month to discuss safety topics and continuous improvement efforts.

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2017 Best Practices in Human Resources

Submissions from HR Best Practices Award Winners:

• Anderson Technologies - Employee Wellness, Engagement and Retention

• Description of Program: Anderson Technologies’ submission for the HR Best Practices Award is for our “Success Coach” program.  We rolled out this program in 2015, and it has had a tremendous impact on employee engagement within our organization. We understand that our employees face many challenges in life.  Some of those challenges are in their professional life; however, many start at home in their personal life.  In many cases the personal challenges are not known by co-workers or supervisors; but they can dramatically effect an employee’s performance, attitude and engagement at work.  They can cause mental and physical problems for an employee, and management or supervisors easily assume this person is just not engaged.   The Anderson Team decided we wanted to offer non-intrusive support, guidance, and counseling to all our employees.   We understood that, as an employer, we were not equipped with the resources or knowledge on how to best help our employees with the life challenges that they face.  Like many companies, we have participated in an Employee Assistance Program for many years, but found most employees didn’t pick up the phone to call for help.  So Anderson decided to take a different approach and have a resource on site – right where employees work.  In 2015, we joined an Employer Resource Network (ERN) along the Lakeshore area.  Our ERN – called TERN-KEYS – is comprised of 8 local companies who all share a “Success Coach”, Scott.  He is here to assist our employees in just about any aspect of life.   In addition to being on-call, Scott comes to Anderson once a week for 4 hours, alternating early mornings and late afternoons to accommodate all three shifts.  He sits in our breakroom and is out on our shop floor engaging with the employees on a personal level.  If needed, there is a place for him to meet with employees on a confidential level.   All information shared with Scott is confidential and not shared with any Anderson Employee, Supervisor, Manager or Owner.

  As an additional note, we also maintain our relationship with our Employee Assistance Program and they work alongside our Success Coach in situations that require or need more counseling.

• Realized Results: We feel this program has had a tremendous impact on our employees. Anderson has averaged about 85 employees since the beginning of this program. During that time, 52 employees have met with the Success Coach, with over 120 services delivered. Some of the services include Auto Repairs, Child Support, Financial Literacy, Financial Assistance, Food Stamps, Foreclosure, Health & Insurance, Home Repairs, Housing Needs, Transportation Needs, and Utilities. In addition, any employee who has a case file with the Department of Human Services is forwarded to our Success Coach to assist with their
  case. Attached are 3 SUCCESS stories direct from our employees themselves which show the kind of impact it has had on their lives. Also attached is our TERN-KEYS Brochure, Monthly News Letter, a Monthly Report on number of employees served, and an overview of the ERN program.
  We want our employees to enjoy coming to work and to be engaged when they are here, and that generally starts with a stable home life. Our Success Coach can help our employees manage the issues they struggle with at home. Our Company Purpose is to Help You Achieve New Levels of Success. That means at home as well as work. Our Success Coach is one of the ways we are trying to help our employees reach their own “new level of success”.

• Nicolet Plastics - Employee On-Boarding

  • At Nicolet Plastics LLC our employee welcoming period, also known as onboarding starts before day one on the job. As part of the interviewing process, all potential candidates complete an online Predictive Index (PI) Survey. The PI results are used to create interview questions specific to the individual's results as well as the position that they have expressed interest in. Upon successfully completing the interview process and background check including pre-employment drug screening, new employees are sent a welcome letter with their start date information, supervisor, and answers to a number of frequently asked questions from prior new employees. The welcome letter is meant to provide them with important information for their first day, but also to alleviate many of the unknowns we feel when starting a new position. 
    Prior to the new employee starting, we ensure computer, phone, email, and time and attendance logins are ready to go. We assign a trainer and prepare the trainer information - name, photo and information sheet to share with the new employee. We also have their individual training plan and/or career path which we share with anyone who has scheduled time within that training plan, over and above the new employee. PI results for the new employee are shared with the Training Coordinator and Team Leaders, focusing on the "Management Strategies" section.On day one of the welcoming period for all new employees, there are many similarities, no matter what position or what department. Of course, we start off with the basic 19, state and federal tax forms but we also include a welcome form to be completed for new employees to share information about themselves. The information shared on this form is typed up as an official welcome and introduction sent out to all employees via email. It is also posted in the employee lunch room for those who don't always check their emails! Photos of all employees are posted in the employee lunch room, with a designated area for new employees who are in their welcoming period. 
    We also include their individual Predictive Index Survey results, Nicolet Plastics organizational chart, Nicolet Plastics Acronym List, Employee Handbook, and What's Your Learning Style quiz. All these items are reviewed and further discussed with our Training Coordinator on the new employee's first day, with all documents shared for reference during future more in depth training. Our Safety Coordinator then conducts our safety training and checks for understanding prior to taking our new employees out on the floor for the official plant tour including all safety precautions. Once the basic paperwork and safety training are completed, our new employee is then ready to report to their assigned Trainer for their new role and their department. Depending on the needs of the role, they will have a t-shirt, water bottle, or Nicolet Plastics notebook waiting for them at their desk or assigned work area. The new employee and the Trainer are provided with the results of the Leaming Style quiz to ensure accuracy and to come up with the best training approach going forward. Our Training Coordinator follows up with the new employee on a weekly basis since our training plans vary from three weeks to 60 days. The format of the follow up, again is determined by the needs of the role. Some roles only require a casual check in, while others are a weekly sit down with Training Coordinator, employee and supervisor to ensure we are staying on track with the training plan and/or to make any adjustments going forward. Our Training Coordinator and Trainers also meet as a Team on a monthly basis to discuss any challenges or concerns they have run into and can proactively come up with a plan to get back on track. 

  • At the end of the welcoming period and official onboarding training, there is a sit down meeting between the Human Resources Manager, Training Coordinator, Supervisor and Employee to review the onboarding process. We talk about what they liked, didn't like, their trainer's training skills, questions they have regarding the job or benefits, and overall what we can do to improve training and/or make Nicolet Plastics a better place to work. During this meeting we validate the PI results again, so that we are managing our employee appropriately. We also discuss their career path going forward and explain how their Individual Development Plans will be scheduled. Successfully onboarding a new employee so that they feel welcome and want to stay at Nicolet Plastics is a big deal. Doing it right takes a lot of time for many people on our Team. Once we have successfully welcomed and on boarded a new employee, we celebrate as a Team with a lunch or meal chosen by the new employee. This new approach to onboarding, which we call the welcoming period does work! The goal for onboarding a production operator in 2016 was 90 days. At the end of June 2016, 33% of production operators left Nicolet Plastics within 90 days and 78% of those hired extended their onboarding training beyond 90 days. We had 34 employees in Production. In 201 7 our goal to on board a production operator is 60 days. As of the end of June 2017, only 14% of production operators left Nicolet Plastics within 90 days and only 4% of those hired extended their onboarding training beyond 60 days. 

  • Today, we have 58 employees in production. The quality of training has not been sacrificed! We have made these positive changes by having a well-planned training schedule with assigned trainers for specific skills, following up to ensure both employee and trainer are on schedule with the plan, and ensuring the new employee knows that our entire Team is committed to their success! 

• Harmony Systems and Service - Employee Retention 

  • Description of Best Practice: Hiring for Attitude, training for skill. We have focused this effort or hiring individuals with developmental disabilities.

  • Realized Results from Best Practice: Our retention and turnover rate continue to be a challenge, and as we review the below information, we have found great success in hiring our RT (developmentally disabled) employees.
    Avg days of retention RT employee >760 days
    Avg days of retention full time employee < 430 days
    Avg. days of retention temporary employees < 30 days.