Safety Bulletin: Electrical Shock Incident
A big shoutout to all our teams this morning! Encore has gone through the month of January without a single recordable injury; we are now well into February continuing this successful trend.
As Encore came into the new year, our goal was to have an entire 2026 without a single electrical shock or electrical incident. About a year ago, the team put into place a new Zero Voltage Verification policy (“If you can touch it, test it”) with the sole purpose of keeping our people safe and helping to reach this goal. Over the last year, with this new policy in place, the entire company saw a significant decrease in electrical incidents from 19 in 2024 to 4 in 2025. Unfortunately, we have already had an electrical shock incident this year and we want to share the details of how this happened and an awareness of the task that was being completed.
Our teammate was asked to remove an existing receptacle from a wall. The individual used their Fluke 2AC proximity tester, inserted it into the hot opening on the face of the receptacle and observed that the proximity tester showed no voltage present. They removed the receptacle from the wall and received an electrical shock while manipulating the feed conductors. What the individual did not realize was that the receptacle was a tamper proof receptacle and that the proximity tester was incapable of pressing through the tamper proof restrictive barrier. The receptacle was also a back wired receptacle with no screws exposed on the side for testing.
So, what should have been done and how can we make sure that an incident like this does not happen in the future. We must make our teammates aware that most receptacles being installed today are tamper resistant. The use of a plug tester for voltage verification procedures while doing trim work is one of the tools on our required tool list, that will bypass the tamper resistant barriers. If the receptacle is side wired, use of the proximity tester to touch the sides screws directly is an acceptable method. The last approach and what our teammate should have done, once the receptacle was pulled out from the wall and the wires exposed, the use of the Fluke 2AC proximity tester to touch the wires directly would have stopped this electrical shock from happening.
Please take the time to talk to your teammates about this potential hazard and ways to test receptacles safely for zero voltage.
Thank you for all the great efforts that you put in each and every day, making the right decisions, and always watching out for yourself and your teammates.