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Building a ‘Safety First’ Culture

About

For over 50 years, Klear Vu of Fall River, Massachusetts, has been a leading supplier of home textiles providing function and fashion in all areas of the home, indoors and out. Since 1927, KlearVu has been known for consistent quality, on-trend fashion, technical innovation, and on-time delivery. Several patented innovative firsts set them apart from the competition: The Gripper® (slip-resistant latex backings keep chair pads in place), Spill Guard® (protective treatment prevents fabric from staining and wrinkling), and Delightfill® and CloudFill® (cushion fills that offer superior comfort, support and durability). Above all, Klear Vu’s success is the result of having a great team.

The Challenge

Developing new talent is an essential goal for employers in the current environment. Klear Vu recognized that there was a need for ongoing training, due to the pandemic and recent new hires. In the last several years, Klear Vu has grown due to its growing ecommerce business.  Klear Vu had also pivoted to fill a need locally and nationally to manufacture thousands of masks at the beginning of the COVID crisis. Many of these masks were donated to the city of Fall River as well as non-profits. Throughout this Klear Vu was focused on improving its safety processes and building a strong safety culture. The company want to go beyond complying with OSHA regulations to embed safety processes and procedures into their culture and contacted MassMEP, part of the MEP National Network™, for help.  

MassMEP was essential in ramping up our safety program to meet the new demands of the post-pandemic era.
— Ben Cooper, President

MEP's Role

Klear Vu was able to build a safety culture and ramp up training initiatives quickly largely because of their strong relationship with their MassMEP advisor, Manny Jerome. A facility hazard assessment was conducted, followed by Safety Kaizens. Safety culture is the set of shared attitudes, beliefs, and practices demonstrated by employees at all levels of the company. A positive safety culture connects everyone in the company around a common goal to measurably reduce near misses and incidents. A strong safety culture will result in decreasing the incident rate while increasing productivity and employee morale. It can make corporations more profitable and increase market share in the long run. There are cost savings for avoiding injuries; a company can’t operate successfully if they don’t have a safe environment. This initiative also increased the leadership team’s confidence when purchasing new equipment, given there was a process to operate it safely.

Klear Vu also engaged with MassMEP in pandemic training that focused on the processes that make up all critical business operations that need to be changed and modified during a pandemic. Klear Vu and MassMEP mapped out those sequences and identified areas of risk and vulnerability to remaining open and viable during a pandemic. The team also developed new strategies, found resources and created a new process to manage and abate the impact from a pandemic. If Klear Vu had been deficient in their pandemic plan, they may have had to shut down.

Created April 26, 2022