Press Releases: Northwest
December 23, 2003
Kaiser Permanente wins workplace safety award from the Association of Washington Business
VANCOUVER, Wash. – Kaiser Permanente's efforts to keep its employees safe on the job have been recognized by the Association of Washington Business. The Association honored Kaiser Permanente with a Continuous Commitment Award for employers with more than 250 employees. The award is part of the Association's 2003 Workplace Safety for our Better Workplace Competition.
"Kaiser Permanente takes workplace safety seriously," says James Farley, area administrator for Kaiser Permanente in Clark County. "We recently made performance-sharing rewards for employees conditional on meeting workplace safety goals. Those goals include having at least 5 percent of our employees engaged in safety activities through our Labor Management Partnership, and seeing a decrease in the amount of workers compensation claims for lost time."
One example of how Kaiser Permanente is making the workplace safer for its 800 employees in Clark County is a joint union-management hazard reduction project in pharmacy. Five hazards and 21 caution areas were identified in January 2003 by union staff and managers, who then worked to research fixes, including changing processes and buying different equipment.
"We did everything from buying headsets to keep phones off shoulders so necks wouldn't cramp, to breaking up long periods of standing and raising computer monitors to lessen body strain," says Farley. "As a result, we eliminated all five hazards and cut the number of caution areas by almost two thirds."
Kaiser Permanente is a group practice health care organization serving the health care needs of about 440,000 people in Southwest Washington and Oregon.
The Association of Washington Business is Washington's largest statewide business organization, with 3,900 members employing more than 600,000 people.
