Page 8 - TEnnessee

What is Your Safety
Marcus Bartholomew
TN811 Damage Prevention Liaison
Ionce worked in a big office located in a major city where large groups of newly hired personnel were always assigned. With the high percentage of new people in training there were also probationary employees waiting out their year of probation. Every few months brought new trainees and every year saw turnover as employees off probation transferred out
to other field offices. With so many young and new employees, the culture in this office was to “rule with an iron fist” by enforcing every policy and procedure, no matter how minor, to the letter. The goal, I assume, was to keep control and order of a young and inexperienced crew in a rapidly changing and dynamic work environment.
Forget to sign out a piece of equipment? Write up. Not wearing your reflective vest on the highway? Write up. Leave assigned equipment in a vehicle at the
end of shift? Write up. Is this your gear bag or
equipment in the hallway? Write up. Paperwork late or missing? Write up.
Obviously, with a large rotating staff of new trainees and probationary employees, minor mistakes and
errors are going to happen. The general feeling among employees was that if supervisors and managers were so heavy-handed on the minor issues, what was going to happen to you if you really messed up? For this specific group, the fear of termination during probation or the training period caused nothing but anxiety on a daily basis. Every call to report back to the office to speak
to a supervisor would have your mind racing to figure out if you had done something wrong. Adding to this would be never knowing what type of discipline you could face because the discipline would vary depending on who you were working for that day.
About a year after I transferred out of this office, I heard a story that highlighted several of the elements I started this article on.
A newer employee was assigned to work an area
that required him to check a location of freeway that bordered a large open section of shoreline and ran along a body of water that was a popular fishing spot. There were no barriers between the freeway and the shoreline and a small grove of trees well off the paved portion of the freeway. The trees made good cover, so
it was common for employees to pull off the pavement and drive to this area to check for vehicles that were not supposed to be there. The highway department had recently distributed a fresh load of wood chips and
6 • Tennessee 811
2024, Issue 4