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Contractor Helps Employees Live Safe And Work Safe With Support From Caterpillar Safety Services
See how one customer partnered with Caterpillar Safety Services to help create a people-first safety culture across all their operations.
By Caterpillar | Posted March 7, 2024
Lehman-Roberts, a Granite Company, has a people-first culture. With a vision of building stronger communities, the hot mix asphalt producer and paving contractor’s business is focused on developing safe, reliable infrastructure. That commitment to safety begins with its own operations and a relentless pursuit of improvement that involves every level of the organization.
In 2019, Lehman-Roberts took a big step on its journey to safety excellence, bringing in a team from Caterpillar Safety Services to help guide an improvement process that yields cultural transformation and measurable results.
“We work with organizations at every stage in their journey,” said Caterpillar’s Kevin Ellison, a Customer Services Consultant who makes regular site visits to Lehman-Roberts to collaborate with leaders and support the teams leading the transformation. “This company was doing a lot of things well. But their leaders wanted to get better. They invested and put our program into place and made it their own. And it’s made a difference.”
WHY CATERPILLAR SAFETY SERVICES?
Lehman-Roberts has been a leader in the highway paving, construction, asphalt and aggregate industry for nearly 85 years. Its sister company, Memphis Stone & Gravel, a Granite Company, operates four sand and gravel mines. Together, the two companies employ nearly 300 people. Both are part of the Granite group of companies.
“We’re very good at mining sand and gravel, paving roads and finding new deposits,” said Jeremy Ramberg, Vice President of Construction. “When it came to our safety program at that time, it was relatively good, but we wanted to be even better. We needed help providing a structured approach to walk down that path of safety excellence.”
As a small to mid-sized company, and before being acquired by Granite, Lehman-Roberts didn’t have the in-house resources required to create the structure and processes necessary for continued advancement on the safety journey. So, in 2019, the company began a collaboration with Caterpillar Safety Services.
MEASURING PERCEPTIONS AND IDENTIFYING OPPORTUNITIES
Caterpillar Safety Services has deployed three Safety Perception Surveys since the beginning of its engagement with Lehman-Roberts. Each assessment begins with quantitative measurement — survey questions that measure statistically proven safety-culture indicators. The Caterpillar team then conducts on-site interviews to create a report that paints a picture of the current safety culture and reveals perception gaps that exist.
“The safety perception study is where we get the data. That gives us the hard numbers to know what we need to work on,” said Ramberg. “Then they identify some areas where we will want to get some more subjective information. That’s when they come in and talk to people. This survey allows us to hear directly from our people what their view on safety is.”
Upon completion of the assessment phase, the Caterpillar Safety Services team meets with leaders at all levels to ensure awareness, understanding and active support of the culture-change initiative. Management involvement, visible participation and visible follow-through are essential, said Ellison.
FOCUSING ON OPPORTUNITIES
Lehman-Roberts invested in significant training to help employees at every level understand their role in creating a culture of excellence. The company has launched five Continuous Improvement (CI) initiatives since beginning work with Caterpillar Safety Services and is beginning work on a sixth.
The company’s first CI Team was created to address the Huddle-Up Process — the gatherings of individual teams across the company before beginning their daily work. “At that time, we kind of had a process, and we kind of didn’t,” said Ramberg. “Some people did it well. Some people didn’t do it very well.”
Though the CI Team was diverse in roles and departments, they quickly noted the lack of a cohesive process. Each team had a different method for holding huddle-ups and not all were effective.
The CI Team created a standardized “Huddle-Up for Safety” process and did a pilot test with several crews before rolling it out company-wide — training employees to utilize the process, and guiding leaders to drive accountability for consistent, quality execution.
Hazard prevention is the focus of another CI initiative. Called “Good Catch/Near Miss,” this program encourages employees to speak up when they see a potential safety issue and recognizes them for staying vigilant.
“Through improved training, employees are empowered to report near misses and good catches by utilizing a simplified reporting process,” said Taylor McPherson, Director of Communications & Community Engagement and a member of the Safety Steering Committee. “It gives people a chance to report what they’re seeing.”
The program also focuses on positive recognition and communication. “The Safety Steering Team looks at what was reported every month, and the ones that really stand out get rewarded with company swag,” said McPherson.
In addition, Lehman-Roberts gives every employee stop-work authority. All team members have the ability to stop work because of a safety infraction — without fear of retribution for speaking up.
“I have heard many times where portions of a job have stopped and a risk has been evaluated, and adjustments have been made to make sure that piece of the operation is safe,” said Ramberg. “People have gone to their supervisors and said, ‘I don’t think this is right.’ They’ve felt comfortable doing that.”
One of the most popular CI initiatives so far has been one that takes safety beyond the workplace and into the home. CI Team members dubbed their efforts as “All Time Safety,” developing initiatives that would help their teammates be safe 24/7.
“That is our motto around safety because we believe that safety is not just at work. It’s a 24/7/365 evolution,” said Ramberg. “We want people to go home at the end of the day the same way they showed up in the morning. But then we also want them to come back to work in the morning the same way they left.”
The team created a set of training processes and set some initial home safety targets. They also developed a framework for a quarterly at-home safety contest to get individual workers more involved in the mission.
The initiative officially launched in early 2023 and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
“This particular CI Team is the one I hear the most feedback about,” said Ramberg. “I have heard from family members that think it’s fantastic that their loved ones work for a company that cares about the person at work and at home.”
Additional initiatives include the creation of a system to effectively communicate reported hazards, and the implementation of a formal Mentor Program to strengthen the onboarding of new teammates.
A NEVER-ENDING JOURNEY
Company leaders are pleased with their progress since beginning work with Caterpillar Safety Services. Perception survey scores have continued to improve compared to the base data collected in 2019.
“At its highest level, one statistic stuck out to us and demonstrated that we’ve taken a step in the right direction: 99.4% of every employee that responded to the 2021 survey believes that the organization actively encourages them to work safely,” McPherson said.
However, Lehman-Roberts recognizes that the safety journey is one that never ends. Even those topics that have already been addressed by a CI Team are continually measured to ensure consistent, ongoing attention.
Ramberg said keeping the safety improvement process flexible and fluid is key. “That’s something we’ve learned from Caterpillar Safety Services,” he said. “We’re always looking to see what we can do to make it better.”
McPherson reinforced: “We aren’t rolling out these programs and then essentially putting them on the shelf where they will sit and function perfectly from here on out,” said McPherson. “Over the years, different people will have new ideas on how to make the process even better. We’re excited about that.”
As far as their collaboration with Caterpillar Safety Services, that work is ongoing but has changed over time — and will continue to evolve as the journey continues. Caterpillar Safety Services will continue to do regular Safety Perception Surveys — collecting information, talking to employees and then providing the data to the Safety Steering Committee.
“Then they’ll give us our marching orders,” said Ramberg. “We’re past the day-to-day handholding. Kevin Ellison has trained us up well so we can continue on this journey of safety excellence.”
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