About three months ago, an assembly worker at Fordham Spring Manufacturing (FSM) narrowly avoided a fatal assembly-line accident. While the company had avoided an accident with an injury for nearly 950 days, the company’s president, Jackie Bentworth, was extremely concerned. The narrowly avoided accident was one of at least three such incidents in the past year. As a result, she formed the Safety Guidelines Committee to develop new procedures to improve the safety culture. Jackie assigned Roy Bang, an engineer, to lead this seven-person committee.

The committee developed a 65-page, comprehensive guidebook called the Fordham Spring Manufacturing Safety Guidelines. Roy placed the guidelines on the company’s intranet where all employees could see them. He also broke the guidelines into separate webpages so that employees could easily find sought-after information quickly. He also planned to lead employee town hall meetings about the new safety guidelines on June 3, June 8, and June 10. He hoped all managers would attend these town hall meetings.

Roy wanted to share the new responsibilities and guidelines with employees throughout the organization. He decided to personally contact each of the managers to provide an overview of their responsibilities. First, he decided to contact mid-level managers because they played a major role in promoting safety among supervisors and assembly-line employees. FSM currently had eight mid-level managers. Each of these managers oversaw production of one of FSM’s core products. The current managers included Steve Easton, Jeffrey Thompson, Deshawn Miles, Angie Zambroni, Brad Wilhemson, Parker Jones, Sandra Argesion, and Daniel King. Roy drafted the following message to send to the mid-level managers:

Your task: Rewrite this message to mid-level managers. Rewrite with a focus on the following goals: (1) make the responsibilities and directions more clear, (2) improve the writing style to make the message easier to read, (3) make the message more personable, and (4) briefly provide the background and rationale for the new safety responsibilities and guidelines.

Transcribed Image Text:

SUBJECT: New Procedures Hi everyone, Congratulations! We have now gone nearly 950 days without any major accidents or injuries! A new set of safety guidelines will be of assistance in continuing this excellent record of safety and concern for the well-being of all employees. After all, we have had at least three close calls that could have been devastating accidents for employees and the company. So, we can never be complacent. During the past nine months, our Safety Guidelines Committee has undertaken the responsibility to develop definitions of various duties and responsibilities of managers at various levels of the organization. The duties and guidelines were developed after extensive review of industry standards and ten meetings were undertaken in the pursuit of the development of clear-cut, concrete, and unambiguous roles and responsibilities for employees at every level or the organization, from the shop floor to the C-suite. Since you are a mid-level manager, I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you the pertinent responsibilities and guidelines that apply to you. All mid-level managers are expected to adhere to the following responsibilities: all mid-level managers should understand, implement, and monitor safety guidelines (the new guidelines are attached to this message); all mid-level managers are in charge of the quarterly evaluation of supervisors' adherence to relevant safety guidelines; all mid-level managers are responsible for making sure that all employees conduct Work Activity Safety Planning before the beginning of all new projects; all mid-level managers are responsible for the provision of safety training and certification of all supervisors and assembly workers; all mid-level managers have the responsibility of the placement of safety performance expectations in the job position descriptions of all supervisors and all assembly workers; all mid-level managers are responsible for the conducting of weekly inspections of all assembly line areas with the accompaniment of relevant supervisors; responsibility of the coaching and mentoring of supervisors and assembly line workers in new safety procedures; responsible for participation in accident review procedures in order to communicate "lessons learned" to all relevant supervisors and assembly-line workers. If by chance there is a serious injury in your assigned work area, please be advised that the committee has identified the followed procedures: ensuring immediate medical treatment for the injured employee; securing the accident area; contacting of the Director of Personnel as soon as the employee is under appropriate medical treatment and the accident area is secured; creation of an official accident report with all information completed as directed to the Director of Personnel within 24 hours. Thank you for all you do for the safety of your designated employees. You truly make a difference. Best wishes, Roy Bang