If the majority of Americans may not give substantial thought to the process by which certain animals become their food, fewer still would give any thought to the myriad workers' comp considerations for those who facilitate the process from farm to plate.

Brian Rodgers is not one of them.

The senior director of corporate risk management for Butterball LLC, Rodgers knows well the various risks for the 7,200 workers at its seven plant facilities, three hatcheries and four feed mills. Until recently, that included manually ushering live turkeys of up to 50 pounds from a large crate and attempting to hang each bird upside-down on a conveyor line for processing. (But more on that later.)

Rodgers describes Butterball as a "fully integrated producer of turkey products." That involves a journey from insemination to the processing and hatching of turkey eggs, along with the transport of poults (baby turkeys) to contract farms, raising them to specific sizes, putting the birds in coops, and transporting them to production facilities where they're humanely euthanized. Then the meat is packaged and transported to cold-storage warehouses and shipped to stores worldwide.

Interdependent stage

The Butterball Safety Process, Rodgers explains, seeks to embody transformational safety culture change from the Reactive model (which relies mostly on compliance as the goal) to the Dependent model (which begins the process of management commitment and adherence to rules and regulations) to the Independent phase (which is heavily weighted around personal values, practice and habits), to the ultimate goal of the Interdependent model — "which aligns the individual to teams of employees where each feels a sense of ownership for safety, and takes responsibility for themselves and others," he says.

The Interdependent stage, Rodgers notes, "is where we do not accept low standards and risk-taking 'banana peels' — otherwise known as unsafe behaviors and/or conditions." These can include wet floors, hoses stretched across trafficked areas, broken wood pallets — "basically, anything that's not supposed to be there that could cause a hazard," says Rodgers. One particular challenge for employees was the aforementioned process by which live turkeys entered the processing facilities — and the claims they were causing.

At Butterball's Mt. Olive, N.C., processing facility (the largest turkey processing facility in the world, where some 2,800 employees process approximately 60,000 turkeys a day), the birds had once arrived at the processing facility in coops on tractor trailers. In what's referred to as a "Live Hang" area, a room kept dark in order to keep the birds more docile and calm, workers would remove the turkeys from the coops and hang each one from shackles on an overhead, moving conveyor.

Automated solution investment pays dividends

Employees assigned to the Live Hang area worked in what is best described as the most difficult and physically demanding job in the entire operation. This is a dimly lit area with multiple elevations, in a wet environment where employees physically handled and guided live birds out of the coops all day long. Musculoskeletal injuries to the shoulder and back were most common, with a high frequency of injuries requiring shoulder rotator-cuff-tear surgery.

The Mount Olive facility alone, Rodgers says, was averaging a dozen OSHA Recordable Injuries per year in the Live Hang process, with an average total incurred cost per injury of $39,560. An automated solution was needed, but it wouldn't be inexpensive.

"Based on product-flow efficiencies, we put forth capital to completely change how that live-hang process works," says Rodgers. Over $15 million was spent to automate the process: A crane now lifts the coops off the trailer and maneuvers and places the coops on a conveyor belt with the birds still inside. They are then dropped into an enclosed area where they're euthanized with CO2 (whereas before, they were electrically stunned); the crate is then pulled out of the chamber and the turkeys are hung on the conveyor, on which they travel to be automatically de-headed.

It was an investment that has paid dividends, eliminating an estimated 85 million opportunities for injury per year. "What was [once] one of the most physically demanding jobs in the building is one of the most if not the most sought-after jobs in the facility," says Rodgers.

Butterball's Mt. Olive, N.C., processing facility is the largest turkey processing facility in the world, where some 2,800 employees process approximately 60,000 turkeys a day. This particular batch was distributed in 2011 to families in need by boxing promoter Don King. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

Butterball's Mt. Olive, N.C., factory is the largest turkey processing facility in the world, where some 2,800 employees handle approximately 60,000 turkeys a day. This batch of frozen turkeys was distributed in 2011 to families in need by boxing promoter Don King. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

Cuts like a knife

The birds continue on a conveyor to be de-feathered with hot water, and then need to be carved manually in order to yield different sections of meat. That's when sharp knives and human hands come into play.

Depending on the size of the facility and type of cuts that need to be made, anywhere from a dozen to 50 people can be working on a "disassembly" line of sorts with extremely sharp knives. Knife-sharpening is critically important, Rodgers says, in order to reduce fatigue in workers by reducing the degree of pressure a worker needs to apply to make a certain type of cut.

Employees are staggered far enough from each other to prevent "buddy cuts," which occur when one worker's instrument hits the person next to them. "We rarely see those types of injuries any longer," says Rodgers.

Still, management is aware that even with the sharpest instrument, after a certain period of time any employee will start to develop fatigue. After two hours have lapsed, employees are shifted to different duty for the next two hours (for example, putting stickers on packages, or working on a line where they use an electric cutting instrument that requires less force) and back again, on and away until the end of the shift. This also helps prevent repetitive-motion injuries.

This practice of varying tasks was implemented around 2014, Rodgers says, and Butterball has been more aggressive in the last three years about making sure it is followed in all of its processing facilities.

Get on your boots

Because many of the processing plants' surfaces can become slick, steps must be taken to limit the number of slips and falls. With the assistance of Lockton (Butterball's broker) and its TPA, Sedgwick, the company thoroughly examined workers' comp loss data and took an exhaustive look at existing flooring conditions to include co-efficiency testing of floor surfaces; employee and contractor housekeeping behaviors; testing of various footwear types; and the selection of a single-source boot manufacturer that provided footwear "with the highest coefficient shoe sole available in the marketplace," says Rodgers.

Also, analysis of 2014 incident and workers' comp loss data found that slip & fall incidents were the second-highest injury frequency type (12% of all work-related injury claims and 18% of total incurred cost, with an average cost per claim of $16,326). The company instituted a targeted enterprise-wide slip & fall initiative, which by 2016′s end had yielded a 69% improvement in workers' compensation claims frequency caused by slips & falls and an 88% reduction in incurred expense.

Every employee's boots are regularly checked for wear; anything found that's beyond the manufacturers' specs results in a new pair. All boots are provided free to employees. "I'd rather give [employees] a $30 pair of boots than have them suffer a $90K-plus back injury due to a slip or fall," says Rodgers.

Rogers worked to establish more automated tasks at Butterball production plants, which subsequently saw a significant reduction in employee injuries. (Photo: National Underwriter Property & Casualty)

'Swimming with sharks'

With stiff headwinds of OSHA regulatory compliance targeting the U.S. poultry industry, Butterball for the past 10 years has worked to earn entry and maintain certification in the OSHA Voluntary Protection Program (VPP). Today, Butterball LLC and Cargill Turkey are the only two poultry companies in America flying the esteemed OSHA VPP flag.

Unlike many of its industry peers, openly collaborating with regulatory agencies such as OSHA in order to ensure compliance is viewed by some as swimming with the sharks. Such is not the case for Butterball, Rodgers says: "The foundation of our safety management process is built upon the core principals of the VPP program, which are management commitment and employee involvement; worksite analysis; hazard prevention and control; and safety and health training."

Over the past two years, its Mt. Olive, Huntsville, Ark., and Carthage, Mo., facilities individually achieved 3 million hours worked without an OSHA lost-time recordable injury.

In order to be OSHA compliant, Butterball's injury rate has to be the stated injury rate for the poultry industry, as defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (which is 4.30%), or 2.15%. Its OSHA Injury and Illness rates are consistently 50%-65% better than the Bureau of Labor Statistics' industry average.

With a keen focus on continuous improvement of the safety management process, Butterball has reduced its OSHA Recordable Injury Rate by 87% and improved its Days Away, Restrictions & Transfers (DART) rate by 76%.

The payoff

One area of particular focus for Butterball has been year-over-year incurred workers' compensation claim development as measured quarterly. Over the past 36 months, claim cost development has flattened and remained steady at 29%, which made possible a 23% workers' comp financial-reserve reduction.

The company's 2016 enterprise average incurred expense for paid closed indemnity claims improved -21% versus 2014, and medical only claims -17.4%. "As compared to our industry peer group, which is experiencing double-digit workers' compensation expense increases, Butterball's average cost per indemnity claim is -54% or $9,524 per claim better and for medical-only claims -41.3% or $584 per claim better than industry peer group," Rodgers says.

The company's focus and challenge around driving workers' compensation managed-care improvement with Sedgwick resulted in 2016 savings of more than $1 million and a -19.7% improvement versus 2014. Additionally, utilization of onsite physical therapy and translation services at the Mt. Olive facility is delivering annual savings of $135,000.

All of these steps also add to better loss history — and lowered insurance rates.

"Lockton has helped us better understand what our variable costs are in relation to our overall [rate] spend," says Rodgers. Most recently, its improved loss rate (21% per $100 of payroll) translated into a real-dollar savings of $377,272.

That's roughly the equivalent of $25 million in sales in the food-manufacturing space, where profit margins are generally low.

"When you think about it those terms," he adds, "it really opens some eyes."

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