People Power

People Power, Transform your business in the era of safety and wellbeing, by Karen J. Hewitt,  Panoma Press, 2021

Just after the pandemic locked us and many manufacturing companies down, my friend Arnold Kamler, CEO of Kent Bikes in South Carolina, made a big decision.  Although demand from bike customers like Walmart presented an out-of-this world opportunity, Arnold is a mensch, which to me means that he has a deep-rooted respect and compassion for the humans we all work with, live with, or even barely know.  To Arnold, there is a right way and a wrong way to treat people, and even in difficult circumstances, he wants to be on the "right" side.  So Arnold started pandemic production with safeguards in place.  Although he knew he couldn't guarantee what happened outside his plant, he fully intended to do the best he could inside for his workers - masking, distancing, etc.  Nevertheless although a short shut down eventually was necessary; still bicycle manufacturing  continues to soar, like no demand any of us could have predicted.

People Power by Karen J. Hewitt is the kind of book that fits right into a world of human safety and wellbeing that many of manufacturing people never consider.  Until you walk, as I did,  into a Midwest motorcycle plant and slip on a thin patch of oil surrounding a team of eager production people tuned into a gemba walk lecture; or you observe that not all warehouse placement and machinery is constantly under safe control and you come dangerously close to a robotic pathway, safety can be very theoretical.  But it's real, and as the Lowell Mill Girls, who averaged two years tenure in the mills before returning to the farm, discovered, lint and fabric dust inhaled in closed up buildings made the workday more difficult and proved fatal later for some of them.  But we like to think some two hundred years later that we have this safety thing nailed.  Well, hold on a minute - not so fast, take a breath.

In People Power, author Hewitt offers case studies followed by guiding comments and directions to help us understand and see the environment workers are operating in.  She used the keywords Build, Buzz and Bake to organize the challenge ahead:

Build - make employee health and safety a strategic focus that is supported by upper management as well as shop floor people

Buzz - take change management approaches to raise awareness of safety and link it to long-term goals

Bake - practice, practice, practice, with an eye to reinforcement.  Its just too easy to slip back!

Beyond strong leadership movement and employee engagement, People Power offers the opportunity for readers to see the critical contributions of professional Health and Safety personnel in the improvement process.  Each chapter ends with a case study detailing what these pros do and how they bring another, more permanent level of analysis and commitment to the working environment.  For that single reason People Power is a strong contribution to manufacturing health and safety performance.  

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers,  patriciaemoody@gmail.com