Safety Committee Minutes - July 27, 2022

Welcome:

We welcomed Mandie to her first meeting and introduced ourselves. Jeff let us know that with Angel’s promotion she will be leaving the Safety Committee and the Library Manager position will be filled by Jason Wiggins who was unable to join the meeting today.

Update & Discussion on Worker’s Compensation Injuries:

We currently have 8 active claims. 3 have occurred since our last meeting. These involved 2 cut injuries and 1 sprain/strain injury. Group discussed each of the claims in depth.

With one of the cut injuries, the committee discussed that to reduce these types of injuries we should be using box cutters instead of scissors when opening boxes and cutting away from your body. With the other cut injury, it involved a staff member getting injured from a paper cutter. We discussed that we should look at the feasibility of having the locations which have swing arm paper cutters purchase a paper trimmer which has an enclosed/protected blade which would reduce the possibility of injury.

New Worker’s Comp Claim/Investigation Form:

Jeff will send the Safety Committee a copy of the updated form so that we can all see what it looks like. The form does ask for more information than the form that we currently use. It is useful for evaluating the cause of the accident and determining if there were things that could have prevented the accident that we can change in the future. We will walk through an investigation next meeting. If we move forward with this updated form, then we will be walking through the procedure with supervisors so they will know what needs to be done if an accident occurs at their library/department.

Review and Discuss Quarterly Safety Checklists:

Not all of the locations have turned in their Quarterly Safety Checklists for the 1^st and 2^nd quarters this year. Erin will reach out to the location managers and ask them to ensure that the checklists are added to the Safety Committee folder and if they weren’t completed ask them to be sure and complete them for the 3^rd quarter.

New Safety Checklist forms:

CompSource, Jeff and Erin have worked on updating the checklist. Jeff will be sending out the updated forms to the Safety Committee to review before we provide them to the locations to use. A question was raised about whether the departments filled out the quarterly safety checklists, the answer is no, and it will be discussed further to determine whether or not the departments will start completing them.

Review Incidents/Accidents:

We had 3 customer accidents reported in June. These involved 2 slips/trips/falls and 1 fainting episode.

Issues with Handling sharps:

This has been submitted as part of the budget. There will be sharps containers placed in each location. After the final budget is approved, we should see a roll out of this program in the fall. We will start with the sharps containers being emptied every 6 months. If a location needs them emptied more frequently then we will do so. The anticipated cost is around $4,000 for the year.

Discuss Safety Manual status:

The updated Safety Manuals have still not arrived from the printer. They were supposed to arrive this week, but we have not seen them yet. When the manuals do arrive, we will have the safety consultant talk with the group about them.

Fire Drills/Evacuation Plans:

We discussed fire drills across the system. We will be working in the future to ensure that all locations are conducting regular fire drills.

Housekeeping:

We had reports of clutter in a branch that was reported to Jeff. We discussed whether or not we needed to send out reminders to staff about keeping things accessible and free of clutter or putting up signs.  Group determined that an email to all correspondents would be sent out by Jeff to remind employees to watch for clutter and housekeeping issues in their work locations/departments.

Diatomaceous Earth:

Jeff and Erin sent out an email to the Library Management Team email group 7/5/2022 to let everyone know that we had determined not to continue use of diatomaceous earth and to dispose of the product.

Audits/walk-through:

We walked through DC as a group.

Next Safety Committee Meeting is Wednesday 9/28/2022. Group will meet at the Edmond Library.