Minosha India organises ‘safety competition’ for workers at shop floor

Minosha Digital Solutions (formerly known as Ricoh India), an office equipment manufacturing company, initiated a very unique employee health activity at its factories for its shop floor employees and contract labourers. The Company has started a ‘safety competition’ for its factory workers.

The firm has divided all its factory workers and supervisors into small teams and has assigned safety champion auditors who are chosen from within the employees. These auditors keep an eye on all the employees and if somebody is found following an unhygienic routine, such as not wearing the mask properly, or not wearing a helmet or not following social distancing norms, marks are deducted for those teams.

In fact, the Company has a leaderboard, which lists the team leading the competition and winners are announced every week.

As revealed by Manish Kumar, head of human resources, Minosha India, it all began when the Company noticed that its shop floor workers were not following the COVID safety norms at the factory and not even wearing their masks properly. Some of the workers were not wearing their helmets at times or wiping sweat inside an operational area, which is rather dangerous and unhygienic in these times.

Kumar goes on to share that despite repeated requests, messages and communications being sent out, there was no improvement. However, the Company did not wish to enforce social distancing norms through punishment, and that is how this activity was devised.

“We received some complaints from people, and so we decided to start this activity to encourage workers to promote employee safety in these times,” says Kumar.

“This activity really became a hit and gained popularity amongst our employees. It helped our safety champion auditors too, who were really finding it difficult to monitor the workers, find faults and correct them, which meant that we were able to achieve what we wanted”

Manish Kumar, head of human resources, Minosha India

The firm thought that instead of punishing people for flouting safety rules, why not take this opportunity to play a little game, which will ensure proper adherence to the safety protocols at the factory and at the same time not make people feel bad about being shamed for non-compliance of safety norms at the factory.

On May 6, the firm completed its second week of the game at its Goa factory, and in the next week they are planning to launch the same at its Rajasthan plant. Accordingly, the Company intends to replicate this in all other factories after a three-week cycle.

As the weeks pass, new modifications will be introduced to the game in consultation with the employees and the workers.

This initiative is just for workers at the factories and not for the corporate employees, as they all are working from home.

According to Kumar, people have really supported this small but effective game, which made them follow the COVID safety norms. “As expected, this activity really became a hit and gained popularity amongst our employees. It helped our safety champion auditors too, who were really finding it difficult to monitor the workers, find faults and correct them, which meant that we were able to achieve what we wanted,” points out Kumar.

From the full-time workers to the contractual labourers and even senior officers at the factory, everyone is playing this game with true spirit and team play, which has given some positive results to the Company.

Not surprisingly, when companies across India are struggling to contain the spread of COVID-19, things at Minosha India have been quite stable. “By god’s grace, at Minosha, we are all safe and the credit goes to our pro-activeness in initiating changes and getting people vaccinated as quickly as possible,” shares Kumar.