Occupational Hearing Health
Thought Leader Forum

Select a Thought Leader to see what they have to say!

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Kim McDaniel

Corporate Safety Advisor, Southwest Airlines

  • How did you manage onboarding? Who from your team needed to be involved?

    We did a presentation to all SWA Sr Leaders & Department Union Leaders to show them the benefits of Shoebox and the cost and time savings. Our largest Department had already requested a solution to Clinic testing, so the timing was perfect.

  • How did you make decisions such as; which room to use and who would administer the testing?

    We set what the Room requirements needed to be and the locations chose the best area for them. Being an Airline Company, too much noise was always a consideration, so in a few cases we had to use testing booths.

  • Did you decide on a rolling cycle schedule of testing or batch testing? Why? What size of company are you?

    From the beginning, we chose to offer each location to use a DOB schedule to allow for a full 12 month testing cycle. The DOB cycle allowed us to spread the testing out and for our largest locations with over 1000 Employees this was critical. We have 20k+ Employees in the Hearing Conservation Program.

  • How long does it take you to get through testing one employee?

    In the beginning employees took longer just because of challenges with technology. Test usually run between 15 – 30 minutes depending on the person

  • Did you opt into SHOEBOX’ Audiological Services, and what was the biggest benefit?

    Absolutely… Shoebox has been one of the best products we have used. The time savings and cost savings are the biggest benefits. The capability of testing in our work environment is also a HUGE benefit.

  • What are the benefits of standardizing your program on a digital platform?

    The benefit of not dealing with a vendor coming on site for testing is enormous. As an Airline trying to schedule employees working 24 hour shifts and pulling them for their normal duties was nearly impossible. So we ended up using clinic testing and that is very costly and not to mention the lost time away from work.

  • How has this shift to boothless testing impacted your programs’ compliance rates?

    Switching to Shoebox has almost doubled our compliance rate and getting better! Leadership support is key.

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Matthew Robert McKibbin

Industrial Hygienist, WSU - Environmental Health & Safety

  • How did you manage onboarding? Who from your team needed to be involved?

    Our entire HCP is managed by one person. I typically onboard/train new employees on my laptop one on one and test in an adjacent space. On a side note, it would be great if the questionnaire could be completed on the web interface.
    For background, I’m with the school’s Environmental Health and Safety unit which is independent from other units both structurally and financially. Other departments are essentially my clients. I schedule and internally bill them.

  • How did you make decisions such as; which room to use and who would administer the testing?

    Out of convenience to our employee units, I tried to hold hearing tests at their respective shops located throughout our campus. The “room scan” was a useful tool to find quiet rooms, but unfortunately eliminated certain shops from testing due to background noise.

  • Did you decide on a rolling cycle schedule of testing or batch testing? Why? What size of company are you?

    We cohort shops together for annual testing, but due to seasonal cycles and employment changes we also do scheduled batches throughout the year. The flexibility in this setup is super important as 20-40% of employees test outside of their cohort. Due to our remote location, we have a lack of providers able/willing to perform tests for an OSHA HCP. Previously, mobile hearing trucks were used to test employees twice per year. For medical reasons and routine absences, we often had to send those 20-40% of employees a long distance to take (re)take tests. WSU has 5,000 employees through which about 180 are in the HCP. We have one main campus, four branch campuses and six agricultural research stations throughout the state.

  • How long does it take you to get through testing one employee?

    Roughly 30-minutes – that includes 1on1 fitting, limited training, Q/A. More general training is completed separately by supervisors of each cohort.

  • Did you opt into SHOEBOX’ Audiological Services, and what was the biggest benefit?

    Yes. Keeping the program on one platform simplifies the process, especially since I’m the only one administering the program. As opposed to hiring a local provider to review results. SHOEBOX’s Audiological Services team is very responsive and wonderful to deal with.

  • What are the benefits of standardizing your program on a digital platform?

    Instant flagged results are huge – STSs, abnormalities. Many employees have long records and the math can get tedious for age correction. Employee tracking (testing status, AS review status and commenting feature), easy printable reports are also huge.

  • How has this shift to boothless testing impacted your programs’ compliance rates?

    We had roughly 15% of employees that were out of compliance mainly due to convenience issues. That has been virtually eliminated.

Anonymous

Occupational Health Nurse, COHC

  • How did you manage onboarding? Who from your team needed to be involved?

    I am the only company nurse who does the testing for all those in our hearing program. I researched devices out there that were new and didn’t require the use of a booth and were able to be moved around from location to location. I contacted many of your other customers prior to going with ShoeBox. We have over 700 employees at Lincoln Industries and about 200+ are in the hearing conservation program.

  • How did you make decisions such as; which room to use and who would administer the testing?

    I use one of our conference rooms that is the quietest in the entire building. It works perfect because I can block out time to do tests and it gives me lots of privacy for education with our people. Once again, I am the only company nurse at LI so I do all of the testing. We used to use third party vendor, Examinetics; I was struggling with managing them and making sure our people got tested as they only came 2 days out of the year. ShoeBox gives me the flexibility to do re-tests in house, and work around our production areas schedules to get everyone done in a timely manner.

  • Did you decide on a rolling cycle schedule of testing or batch testing? Why? What size of company are you?

    700+ employees in Lincoln only. Over 1100 company wide (WI, MX, MN, TX). I only do testing for Lincoln, NE sites. I cover 6 locations here.

  • How long does it take you to get through testing one employee?

    Depends on the education level of each patient. New hires take longer. But mostly 10-15 min per person.

  • Did you opt into SHOEBOX’ Audiological Services, and what was the biggest benefit?

  • What are the benefits of standardizing your program on a digital platform?

    Time management. No more duplication of work & I manage everything and run everything on my own.

  • How has this shift to boothless testing impacted your programs’ compliance rates?

    I am at 100% compliance every year with annual tests and am able to get new hires done within first 1-4 weeks of employment.

Kacie Poole

Corporate Manager Occupational Health & Nursing, Simmons Foods Inc.

  • How did you manage onboarding? Who from your team needed to be involved?

    We had one large meeting with the Shoebox team to go over the equipment and the software in depth. From there, I have individually trained all new Team Members that will be using the equipment. Nursing and safety were the main parties involved in the training.

  • How did you make decisions such as; which room to use and who would administer the testing?

    This was based on each individual location. Most have offices located inside the facility that are quiet enough to conduct testing. Nursing, Safety, and People’s Champions are conducting the testing.

  • Did you decide on a rolling cycle schedule of testing or batch testing? Why? What size of company are you?

    We have been playing catch up from last year due to COVID, however; going forward, we will be using a rolling cycle based on hire date. Our company has a little over 6,000 employees.

  • How long does it take you to get through testing one employee?

    Typically one employee’s test takes between 10-15 minutes. Sometimes it takes longer, but I would say that is average.

  • Did you opt into SHOEBOX’ Audiological Services, and what was the biggest benefit?

    The biggest benefit has been the flexibility to test at our own pace and on our production schedules.

  • What are the benefits of standardizing your program on a digital platform?

    It is easy to see and compare results on the online platform. It is also simple to run reports and quickly see who still needs testing, etc.

  • How has this shift to boothless testing impacted your programs’ compliance rates?

    We are still working on getting our schedule worked out, but I feel that it will help us drastically in the future. Our goal is to get baseline testing done prior to Team members even hitting the production floor.

Gary Conner

Regional Safety Coordinator, Wester Partitions Inc.

  • How did you manage onboarding? Who from your team needed to be involved?

    As I tested each worker their information was uploaded, new hires were uploaded by our office manager who also performed testing. Myself and the office manager were the ones involved.

  • How did you make decisions such as; which room to use and who would administer the testing?

    I ran pre testing in different locations of our office to ensure outside noise was acceptable, I decided our testing would be performed by myself for existing workers in the field and new hires would be performed by our office manager.

  • Did you decide on a rolling cycle schedule of testing or batch testing? Why? What size of company are you?

    We run a yearly testing for January to January. Why? This makes it easy to manage when testing is due. Our Region is roughly 100 employees.

  • How long does it take you to get through testing one employee?

    Each worker is different, I can get through a test anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes per worker.

  • Did you opt into SHOEBOX’ Audiological Services, and what was the biggest benefit?

  • What are the benefits of standardizing your program on a digital platform?

    Being mobile allows me to test on availability of each project, compared to scheduling a testing truck and locking down a project for a specific day, which interferes with productions of projects. This system is by far less impactful to schedules and deadlines of our projects, I can test workers at my leisure.

  • How has this shift to boothless testing impacted your programs’ compliance rates?

    There has been zero impact to our job performance, with the ability to test when it works for a certain location there is little to no interference.