2021 Everyday Safety Hero Award Recipients
Nominees and recipients of this award are not necessarily safety and health professionals, but are individuals who champion occupational safety and health excellence in their workplaces. Whether they have volunteered to spearhead safety and health initiatives or provided mentoring or support to co-workers, these individuals have truly earned the title of Everyday Safety Hero.
Patti Miskus
School Nurse with Saint Mary Catholic Community School
Patti has worked tirelessly over the past year to ensure that the students and staff are able to successfully attend school and maintain good health. Patti’s vigilance and dedication have helped her reach her personal goal of keeping the Saint Mary’s school community healthy and safe.
Patti leads the school’s re-entry team and has been instrumental in developing and maintaining health protocols and policies. She gave up a large portion of her summer vacation, going from room to room to measure the distance between desks and then determining how each classroom should be arranged for optimum student safety. Patti continued to guide the school through the year as the guidance regarding the pandemic evolved. Under Patti’s leadership, Saint Mary’s has stayed open every day since school resumed in August—all this in addition to her extensive list of normal school nurse duties.
Katie Dodd
Certified Early Intervention Specialist with ATI Worksite Solutions
As the pandemic hit, Katie took the initiative to re-design Allegion’s first responder training to a virtual platform into a “choose your own adventure” style training which received excellent feedback from Allegion’s first aid team. Her blood pressure awareness month, was integral in getting a fitness center for the facility, and she constantly pushes her employees to take ownership of their health.
Katie also launched “The Safety Spotlight” to inform employees of safety improvements throughout the plant. The spotlight also highlights Allegion associates and how they participate in keeping the plant safe. Recognition of employees has been a morale boost and encouraged others to strive towards safety too. Katie also participates in safety walks, audits, and risk assessments and documents these in the Spotlight. She also created a pre-shift stretching bingo game to provide associates with a fun reminder to reduce the risk of musculoskeletal injuries.
Claire Sayre
Certified Early intervention Specialist, also with ATI Worksite Solutions
Claire works across 6 different locations in Indiana to prevent employee injuries in Red Gold’s food manufacturing, warehouse, transportation, and office employees. One of the most unique challenges she faces is the doubling of the workforce during busy season. Claire gets to know the employees well through her daily time on the floor. Clair has written over 100 functional task assessments for Red Gold to assist with understanding each job’s tasks and potential risks.
Claire also puts together monthly eboards for all the breakrooms with safety topics for production employees, posting educational materials in both English and Spanish. She keeps an eye out for hazards on the floor that could potentially lead to injury and includes them on eboards to create awareness. For the office employees, she developed a monthly safety newsletter addressing the potential hazards specific to the office staff, as they are much different than those found in production. The employees at Red Gold value the information they get from these newsletters and eboards, and they also serve as a reminder for them to constantly think about working safely.
Russ Dunton, Donald Mead, and Gene Fischer
No-Sag Products, a Division of Leggett & Platt, Inc.
These three individuals, all engineers by trade, have a combined 97 years of experience at No-Sag Products. They each carry many job duties and responsibilities, yet keep safety at the forefront of everything they do at our facility. While they have always been safety-conscious, 2020 presented new challenges in the form of COVID-19.
In March, No-Sag Products began researching and implementing re-designs in production for social distancing, putting together plans for disinfection, and spearheading the company’s efforts to communicate with its workforce. When supplies were hard to find, the team designed and built in-house disinfecting stations for the workforce and used their contacts to find needed PPE. In support of their local community, they located all of the N95 face masks stored at the company and donated them to the Kendallville City Police Department. Throughout this pandemic, they have led both by example and through plant teams to ensure the wellbeing of their fellow employees. Beyond COVID, the facility has worked two consecutive years, just shy of 500,000 hours, without a recordable injury or illness.