The Best Practice

I am not a person who puts much stock in luck. I believe that in our line of business, it takes the correct tools to do a job correctly – especially since I’ve been the victim of a 4-inch lag to the forehead while trying to use a bell wrench as a hammer. I also believe that how you use those tools is equally important. And finally, I believe that there are times when we need a little help from documents called “best practices.”

What exactly is a best practice? It is a set of guidelines, ethics or ideas that represent the most efficient or prudent course of action in a given situation. Essentially, it’s documentation of a procedure that is the most effective in performing a task safely. Best practices may be established by authorities, or they may be internally dictated by a company’s management team, including trainers, supervisors and safety managers.

Most companies have what are known as work practices – mine does, too. These are written documents that lay out every possible characteristic, purpose and step of a specific task to assure that the task is performed safely and correctly. Using these two documents – the best practice and the work practice – in combination helps to ensure a safe outcome when performing a critical step or task.

Lately I have been tasked with writing a number of best practices to deliver to our employees; they serve as reminders to keep employees safe when performing a specific task. These best practices have been spurred on by either a major discussion during a safety meeting or an actual incident.

Friends, if your workers are deviating from your company’s work practice procedures and the company requires strict adherence to those procedures as written, your workers must also have copies of your best practices on how to perform specific tasks. In addition to helping keep them safe, this will help to ensure that tasks are being performed properly.

When a best practice is to be used, identify it in the daily job briefing along with the critical step it will be used with, the hazards involved, how those hazards will be controlled, and which employee will be performing the critical step. Job briefings and any best practices used must be verbally discussed before work starts in the morning and again after lunchtime, or at any scope change.

Please note that different companies have different best practices for their specific work, but any document making work safer for employees is worth its weight in gold. Job briefings, job hazard analyses, work practice procedures and best practices save lives. They are for your safety so you can go home at the end of the day. Don’t just keep them in your desk, truck or briefcase. Talk about them and review them with your team. Using them is the most important thing.

About the Author: R. Neal Gracey is the craft operations trainer for Henkels & McCoy, a MasTec company.