Elements of a heat stress program

Responding is Steve Ramos, regional safety specialist, Fastenal, Fresno, CA.

Some heat stress programs sound great in theory and even look good on paper. But in reality? They’re easy targets for failure. Bridging the gap between the metaphorical write-up and their physical application ensures extreme heat doesn’t harm workers (or the work).

How to handle heat stress symptoms

The answer to heat stress is often framed as swift and easy: As long as you have water and shade, you’ll be fine. But quick solutions can easily lead to quick tradeoffs.

This means that if production is at risk, safety (specifically heat stress mitigation) is the first to go. Quota takes priority, and the common quasi-fix is to sacrifice something deemed less important.

But this strategy only sets up for a greater risk than missing a production goal. What could’ve been a 15-minute break turns into an employee visiting the hospital and missing days of work, all because taking fewer breaks was seen as “no big deal.”

Make safety nonnegotiable

The solution is simple in writing: Build heat stress programs directly into the production schedule. That way, they’re not seen as disruptions but rather an innate, essential part of the process. How this looks in practice is the other half of the equation.

The actual steps start out small: Move hydration stations closer to production. Make breaks mandatory, not a suggestion. Incentivize supervisors and teams to prioritize heat stress safety with rewards such as gift cards, bonuses or raffles. It’s about creating big changes from small steps.

The clash of culture

On top of production taking priority, the other cause is, basically, culture. Taking breaks, making time for hydration, etc., have been generally perceived as weaknesses and risks slowing down production – none of which anyone wants to be associated with.

Today’s workplace culture seems to have indirectly created the sense that safety is in competition with production, as if a team must sacrifice one to have the other. Undoing this kind of stigma surrounding heat stress safety is what will drive compliance without risking throughput.

But changing an established culture requires more nuance than just mandating break time.

A shift in perspective

The starting point? Don’t frame safety as a competitor of production – build it as a critical aspect of the production’s protection. When we hear the word “safety,” we automatically think of people. But rarely do we focus on the ripple effects that protecting people create for the business as a whole.

Emphasize that protecting the team supports production better than skipping breaks does. Culture is a motivational force behind the decisions we make on the job. Shifting our perspective on culture will help with the decision-making for both production needs and safety compliance.

The final takeaway

Deterrents are useless if you don’t actually use them. That’s what a heat stress program does; act as a preventive against greater dangers. Building heat stress mitigators directly into the schedule and changing the culture within safety will protect both your production and your people.

Create a system in which production and people work together rather than against each other (in terms of managing heat stress). You’ll see improved compliance, throughput and morale as a result.