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Office of the City AuditorHome | Performance | Services | Reports | Audit & Finance Committee | Employment | Outreach | Investigations | Awards | Links & Resources Employee Safety: Solid Waste Services Department (Volume 3 of 4) Issued: April 2001 SUMMARY
This report presents the results of our performance audit of the Solid Waste Services Department’s management of its employee safety program. The objective of the audit was to assess the adequacy and effectiveness of management controls in place to prevent and reduce on-the-job injuries experienced by the department’s employees.
In 1995, the Solid Waste Services Department (SWS) was identified by the Texas Workers’ Compensation Commission (TWCC) as a hazardous employer under that agency’s Hazardous Employer program because of the high number of injuries resulting in lost work time experienced by SWS employees. As a result of the TWCC designation, specific corrective actions were taken by SWS in order to increase the department’s focus on employee safety, which led to an improvement in SWS’ safety performance. However, performance declined in fiscal year 1999 (FY 99) and again in fiscal year 2000 (FY 00). In fact, in FY 00, SWS experienced the highest rates of injury of all City departments. These injuries resulted in just under $500,000 in incurred medical costs and payments for lost wages as required by Texas workers’ compensation laws. SWS also paid an additional $23,000 in wage continuation benefits and $168,000 in full-duty wages paid to employees working on medically restricted or light-duty assignments.
Many of the jobs within the operations divisions of SWS are inherently hazardous based on the physically demanding nature of the work and exposure to hazardous conditions and materials. In FY 00, the rates of injury were highest in the Recycling Division, where the work is completely manual and exposure to lifting-related injuries, including shoulder and back strains, is particularly high. Despite these inherent risks, evidence suggests that a high proportion of the department’s injuries could likely be avoided through actions of the employee by increasing attention to safe work practices and following existing departmental safety procedures, designed to protect employees from the inherent risks of the job.
The results of our audit indicate that the SWS safety program has many of the components essential to success; however, crucial elements are still lacking which hinder its effectiveness. Specifically, the department’s lack of progress in controlling on-the-job injuries is attributable in large part to the lack of:
Further, we found that injury causes are not always sufficiently identified and recorded using existing accident investigation procedures and reports, and trend analysis is not performed for injury causes. One reason for this is that the workers’ compensation and safety activities in SWS have not historically been coordinated, which in some cases led to inefficiencies and inaccuracies collecting and tracking injury information, as well as delays in initiating investigations and implementing possible prevention strategies.
In addition, SWS does not currently utilize methods to identify potential hazardous conditions or practices before they lead to employee injury, such as facility inspections and work crew observations. The absence of key hazard identification methods likely precludes the ability of the department to identify appropriate methods for injury prevention and contributes to the department’s lack of emphasis on holding employees and managers accountable for avoidable injuries.
Finally, the department’s safety training component is thorough and appears generally effective, but it could be enhanced by providing regular refresher training that reinforces the department safety standards and the prevention of common causes of injury. In order to facilitate determinations regarding the safety training needs of its employees, SWS would benefit from developing a system for tracking employee training attendance records and training requirements.
Recommendations issued in this report are aimed at improving SWS’ processes for systematically identifying, analyzing, and controlling hazardous conditions and acts in order to reduce the number of injuries experienced by the department’s employees as well as resultant costs.
Click here to go to our audit request form to request a hard copy of this report (Report No. AU00302C) or download the entire text of the Employee Safety: Solid Waste Services Department audit (Volume 3 of 4) (Size: 553 KB) in Adobe Acrobat. Click here to view follow-up audit report issued in February 2004. You will need Adobe's Acrobat
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