The degree of risk faced by resort employees is difficult to quantify. Statistics on the number and severity of injuries to ski industry employees aren’t available in a central database. In part, this is because injury data are collected by the states, and each state has its own rules and definitions. To further obscure ski industry data, the U.S. Department of Labor and OSHA lump ski area employees with carnival and amusement park workers. And much of the data collected by insurance companies is proprietary.
Still, we know the cause of most accidents: human error. Throughout industry in general, 96 percent of injuries are the result of an act, or absence of an act, on the part of the injured party. In other words, most accidents can be prevented.
There are many jobs within a ski area that entail some risk. Some of them are obvious: Lift mechanics climb 50-foot towers. Ski patrollers work with explosives. Trail-maintenance crews use chainsaws. Groomers maneuver heavy equipment over 40-degree slopes. Snowmakers work with high voltage and extreme water pressure. Other risks are less obvious: Kitchen workers use sharp knives. Chambermaids bend a lot. Even a ski shop worker stepping out for a latte can slip on an icy pathway and blow out an ACL.
Frequently, ski area jobs must be done in furious weather and in the wee hours, increasing the risk factor. A large contingent of the workforce is young and inexperienced with an attitude that skews more toward recklessness than caution. All these factors require a dedication to risk management from resort staff.
The one activity where employee injury research has been done is injuries while skiing. Safety researchers Dr. Jasper Shealy and Carl Ettlinger contributed to a 1996 study among skiing employees, such as ski instructors and patrollers. The report revealed that routine trail checks or lessons account for about two-thirds of all on-hill employee injuries. Instructors skiing racecourses, free skiing during hours of employment, and ski patrollers running sleds were also identified as risky tasks. Employees were more likely to sustain minor knee sprains and less likely to suffer serious sprains or fractures than recreational expert skiers.
Accident Scenes
So where else are accidents likely to happen to resort staff?
The chairlift is a common accident scene for employees. In one case a few years ago, a lift operator at Lutsen, Minnesota, caught his clothing on a chair. He was carried over the slope and fell approximately 30 feet to the ground.
More recently, two Colorado employees met their demise falling off chairlifts. Jack Mason, 53, the mountain manager at Winter Park, died in a fall after an epileptic seizure in November. And 47-year-old Kenneth Zech, a Keystone Resort restaurant worker was last seen alive riding down a high-speed quad with the safety bar down. His autopsy revealed that he had a bad heart, but died from the trauma of a 32-foot fall.
The influx of seasonal employees from abroad adds another layer of complexity. At Vermont’s Mad River Glen in January, a lift attendant from Brazil walked across the path of a double chair. The chair hit him in the head, knocked him cold for about 10 minutes, and he suffered a concussion. Though Mad River provides a glossary for international employees, the word “duck” wasn’t included.
Snowmakers are also frequent visitors to the injured list. The industry was reminded just how dangerous the job can be last November, when a 28-year-old Keystone snowmaker perished. His clothes became ensnared in the pipes and controls of a cylindrical snowmaking shelter. He drowned when the shelter filled with water.
These are, of course, rare incidents and not the norm. Risk management has received a great deal of attention over the decades, and the rate of employee injury has declined in many industries. It will take a dedicated effort to achieve additional reductions. “Gone are the days of hazards that had such high relative risks that it was easy to find the cause and easy to implement control technologies to get the injury incidence rates down,” says Dr. John Howard, director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. “Safety professionals must aggressively ret out all of the factors that are preventing further progress in reducing workplace injuries and fatalities.”
Oh, Behave
How can areas bring the accident rate down further? The latest trend in loss prevention is known as “behavioral safety,” according to Bob Griffin, vice president of loss control and safety services at MountainGuard Insurance. The idea is to get employees to recognize inappropriate behavior and the results. Management’s role is to observe work habits and repeatedly communicate safety concepts.
“The old way was to educate, then discipline,” says Griffin. Behavioral safety uses more psychological finesse. Griffin gives an example: “Let’s say it’s part of a worker’s job requirements to use safety glasses. The glasses were provided to the employee, and he was trained to use them. But he’s young, and has the attitude that an accident won’t happen to him. Managers trained in behavioral safety would remind him to wear the glasses, verbally or in writing. If they have to remind him all the time, eventually someone has to say, ‘You’re telling us you don’t want to be on our team. If you don’t wear the glasses, we can’t have you here.’”
Griffin’s new-age persuasion is backed up with old-fashioned tough talk. “We try to make people realize that collecting 60 percent of their salary on worker’s comp isn’t a good deal,” he says. “If we can get employees to have a little skin in the game, we might have something.”
Ski areas have at least two reasons to reduce injuries, says Mark Petrozzi, vice president of risk management at Booth Creek Resorts. Most important, he says, is the moral perspective. “It’s the right thing to do. We care about people.”
Then there’s the financial imperative. With escalating insurance premiums and the omnipresent threat of litigation, a ski area can’t afford not to emphasize safety. A resort with a poor safety record runs the risk of becoming uninsurable. “I’m charged with protecting this company,” says Petrozzi.
Core Value
Petrozzi’s goal is to establish a “safety culture” at Booth Creek resorts. “We want to make safety a core value,” he says. To achieve that goal, the resort implemented a multi-tier program that includes screening, extensive training, incentives and penalties. It all fits in with the behavioral safety philosophy.
The program starts with post-offer, pre-employment information gathering.
Before an employee starts work, the resort wants to know about pre-existing injuries. “We use this information as a baseline,” says Petrozzi. And he emphasized the company is careful that the screening is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Booth Creek’s idea of training is a continuing process. First, all employees receive orientation specifically tailored to the safety exposures in their departments. An abbreviated version of Ettlinger’s ACL awareness program, which focuses on tactics to prevent or reduce the incidence of knee injuries, is included for skiing employees.
Then employees must attend regular five-minute topical safety meetings that require a minimum 80 percent attendance; that is, the meeting will be repeated until at least 80 percent of the employees in that department attend. These mini-meetings often draw on recent incidents as catalysts for discussion. For example, if the snow removal crew backs into a guest’s car, the group will focus on the proper procedure for backing up a vehicle.
“We’re always keeping stuff right in front of people so we don’t have another accident. Repetition is good,” says Petrozzi.
Positive reinforcement plays a big part in Booth’s safety strategy. “We have all kinds of incentive programs that vary by resort,” says Petrozzi. “We recognize good safety deeds. Some of our resorts throw parties when they reach a goal of days without a loss-time injury. We do a lot of coaching. We try to keep this a positive program.”
Some of Booth Creek’s six ski areas even include safety and risk performance in annual reviews with supervisors. They set goals, say to reduce injury rate by 20 percent.
When procedures aren’t followed, managers use a four-step system for discipline:
- 1) Verbal reminder
- 2) Written warning
- 3) Furlough of up to three days
- 4) Termination
Petrozzi realizes that it’s unrealistic to expect some departments to be injury-free because of size and the nature of the work. That’s why it’s important to have a post-loss strategy. An example would be a critical incident stress debriefing (CISD) in the case of a serious accident. CISD is a group activity administered by professional psychological debriefers. The program is offered to employees who were directly involved in an incident or witnessed it. It helps workers cope with trauma and provides support. The objective is to minimize the potential for psychological problems and help the person return to normal levels of functioning.
After an incident, it’s important to get people back to work as soon as possible. Sometimes that means placing them in different jobs. For example, if a food-service employee hurts his back lifting a sack of potatoes, he may be placed at a reception desk where he doesn’t have to pick up anything heavier than a telephone receiver. Pennsylvania’s Seven Springs Mountain Resort prides itself on an aggressive return-to-work program. “We rarely are not able to accommodate an employee because we have good cooperation between departments,” says Lauri Jones, risk manager at Seven Springs.
All the thought and vigilance is paying off for Booth Creek. According to Petrozzi, the resort chain has an “experience modifier” of less than 1. That’s insurance parlance meaning Booth’s losses are less than the industry average. And the result is a savings on premiums.
Boiled down, the idea is to keep safety high on list of priorities. That helps decrease the number of accidents, if you believe in accidents.
“There’s no such thing as an accident,” says Petrozzi. “There’s always a cause.”
Employee Responsibilities
The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 places most of the onus for workplace safety on employers. But Federal regulations state that each employee “shall comply with all occupational safety and health standards and all rules, regulations, and orders issued under the Act.” Employee responsibilities and rights in states with their own occupational safety and health programs are generally the same as for workers in states covered by Federal OSHA. An employee should:
- Read the OSHA poster at the job site.
- Comply with all applicable OSHA standards.
- Follow all lawful employer safety and health rules and regulations, and wear or use prescribed protective equipment while working.
- Report hazardous conditions to the supervisor.
- Report any job-related injury or illness to the employer, and seek treatment promptly.
- Exercise rights under the Act in a responsible manner.
