RISK MANAGEMENT
How an employee-led safety committee at Holiday Valley has made measurable impacts on culture and the bottom line. SAFETY CULTURE PAYS OFF
provide traction devices and encour- age appropriate footwear for various positions (e.g. ticket checkers, valets, outdoor hosts). • Near-miss reporting and root cause analysis. Tools like the “5 Whys” exercise—an exploration of cause and effect by asking “why” five times to get to the root cause of a problem—help identify underlying issues. • Collision prevention, a major focus in recent seasons. Snowsports, safe- ty patrol and ski patrol leadership train staff to select appropriate routes during higher-traffic times, to exercise vigilance in high-traffic zones, and to use good judgment when choosing a stopping place. Safety patrol has also stepped up enforcement of the Reckless Skier policy, particularly in managing evening student groups; strengthened its relationship with group sales to improve the flow of information to school group advisors; and even boards school buses at the start of each season to give student groups a safety orientation. The committee’s focus on safe skiing expectations corresponded with a sharp drop in the on-snow injury rate, and the on-snow departments have maintained those improvements for four years run- ning. Although we can’t tie near-miss reporting and root cause analysis to any specific reductions, it is our belief that the overall decline in employee incidents is partly a result of an improved safety
By Kate Rauber, Director of Skier Services, Holiday Valley, N.Y.
which increases intradepartmental awareness of the committee. The committee meets monthly or bimonthly to review incidents and near misses across the company, discuss recent safety and operational inspec- tions, share timely safety messages (e.g., sun safety in the summer), and solicit employee feedback. A standing agenda item is a rotating review of department safety practices. Through this review, department members share their suc- cesses, receive recognition, and field questions from peers. This helps identi- fy shortfalls and spark improvements, such as a recommendation to the facili- ties department to secure AV cables with specialized cord covers rather than car- pet runner mats. Safety Initiatives Some of the specific initiatives the com- mittee has focused on include: • Safe skiing and riding. We contin- ually deliver a message that on-snow staff are expected to ski or ride with safety in mind. • Slip and fall risk reduction. We
In 2017, Holiday Valley, N.Y., launched an Employee Safety Committee with the help of a loss control consultant from our insurance broker. Our goal has been to strengthen the safety culture at the resort to improve our employee safety record. And in that, we have been very successful. This effort has a significant moral justification: we don’t want our employ- ees to get hurt while they are at work. It also has a business justification: invest- ing in a strong employee safety culture saves time, energy, and money in the long term. Since its inception, we’ve seen a huge improvement in our experi- ence mod (more than 50 points) and have realized six-figure savings in our work- ers’ compensation policy premiums. Employee injuries have declined in both frequency and severity. Over the past four years, we’ve cut our average employ- ee incident rate in half compared to its historic peak. Similarly, the severity rate also has fallen by 50 percent, measured in terms of lost work days. As our safety initiatives become more robust, we con- tinue to see a positive trend. Safety Committee Meetings Holiday Valley’s safety committee has approximately 15 employee members, from frontline staff to c-suite leaders, plus loss control representatives from the New York State Insurance Fund. While the committee has some stand- ing members, membership rotates with turnover and seasonal shifts. We aim to have members from any department that faces significant job hazards and/or losses. For example, housekeeping, which has been overrep- resented in the incident data at times, as well as seasonal jobs like golf course maintenance and snowsports, which tend to have unique risks that merit timely discussion. If a member cannot attend, departments send an alternate,
The Holiday Valley safety committee has members from various departments and meets monthly or bimonthly to discuss incidents and near misses, safety inspections, and solicit employee feedback.
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