Expanding the Scope of Winter Safety
Like it or not, winter is coming. Are you ready for the snow, ice and — complacency?
Like it or not, winter is coming. If you live in a four-season region, there’s no escaping winter’s frigid mess, or the safety issues it brings with it.
Winter hazards are nothing if not predictable. Slip hazards due to frozen ice. Frostbite and other forms of cold stress. Housekeeping issues in entrances and walkways as employees track slush through the workplace. How they appear may vary from one incident to the next, but every year, some permutation of these safety issues will pose a threat as the weather turns colder. And every year, safety professionals will dust off their talking points on winter weather hazards.
In safety meetings and toolbox talks, safety folks remind workers to test their footing when they exit a vehicle. They tell people about the hazards of slush-covered surfaces and remind them to use wet-floor signs. They emphasize the need for insulated clothing and monitoring oneself for signs of cold stress.
These efforts are well-intentioned. They’re also not overly effective. Injury Facts tracks temperature-related fatalities in a single category, titled “Natural Heat or Cold.” Looking at only December, January and February to isolate for cold-induced fatalities, the data reveals that the number of fatal incidents has stubbornly refused to decline from 2013 to 2022, the most recent year for which there is data. In that time, the rate of cold fatalities has held largely steady, with a notable uptick in 2021 and 2022. If anything, things are getting worse.
It seems reasonable to suggest this is a result of more extreme weather patterns, though further shoveling through the data may be necessary to confirm. But there is no shortage of severe winter weather, as the National Centers for Environmental Information Storm Event Database documented almost 120,000 severe winter weather events in the past decade.
After years of the same safety meetings on icy hazards, complacency can’t help but set in. This diminishes the effect of these interventions, as workers start to tune it out. Employees feel like after all this time they know how to deal with the cold, and then they end up on their backside because the slip potential of ice was the furthest thing from their minds.
If the current approach is failing to make a dent in winter fatalities, and the weather isn’t letting up, then something needs to give. Safety folks need a more sustainable and effective approach to warming workers to the dangers of the cold.
There are two basic ways to achieve this end. The first is to talk about existing winter hazards in new ways. The goal here is to find more engaging approaches to the cold-related safety issues that have been in discussion for years. The second is to expand the boundaries of what workers think of as a winter hazard because there’s a lot more to winter safety than contending with snow and ice.
Warming Up Cold Weather Safety
The English language contains plenty of different terms for foul winter weather—such as snowstorm, blizzard, whiteout, snowfall, hail, icy blast, sleet, freezing rain and snow squall—and there are just as many ways to talk about winter’s safety effects in the workplace. If you’re having trouble getting traction with winter safety, then it’s time to change how you tread.
Unless the basics have been covered, then start there. This means talking about winter hazards in toolbox talks and putting up signs to highlight seasonal safety challenges like frostbite and ice. But it takes more than that to heat up a cold weather safety program.
Because winter hazards arrive year in and year out, find approaches that encourage employees to shake off plenty of complacency. Take a different tack in safety meetings by getting workers to participate. One option is to ask them to predict when and where a cold-weather injury might occur. Or instruct them to rank winter hazards according to their relevance to the workplace. Or ask workers how they would educate their kids about cold stress if they got a job on the crew.
Alternately, take a 24/7 view of winter hazards—by discussing safety beyond the workplace—to expand the options on the topic and as a way to encourage workers to think differently about winter safety. In many ways, the exact content of winter safety talks doesn’t matter. The point is to get workers actively thinking for themselves—and that is done by finding ways for them to think through the same-old hazards in a new way.
Do the same thing in one-on-one conversations. During walkarounds, stop to talk to employees about winter safety. Use the same prompts outlined above to actively engage workers. Another topic of conversation is the cost of injury—how would it affect their personal lives to get frostbite or injure themselves by slipping? Make sure workers see the value in paying attention to winter hazards, not in terms of dollars and cents, but in terms of missed family events and reduced quality of life.
After conducting a walkaround and speaking to employees about winter safety, do it again a couple days later. And then do it again. And again. Each time, find a new angle to discuss cold-weather hazards so that it doesn’t become repetitive. After a while, the underlying message will be clear: winter safety matters, and it’s something we’re going to pay attention to all season long.
Looking Beyond Frostbite
A warning: after a few weeks, it will feel hard to find a new approach to discussing icy parking lots and frostbite risk. Expand your view of winter safety now because as the thermometer drops, there’s a lot more to talk about than slips and cold stress.
Winter brings a bundle of human factors that put workers at risk. They’re harder to spot than black ice, and they can be just as deadly. Shorter days increase our collective levels of fatigue. A slew of holidays, from Thanksgiving to Presidents Day, can ramp up distraction in the workplace. Holiday shopping will invariably lead to money-induced stress in some of your workers. Cold weather induces frustration.
There are two goals here. The first is to disrupt complacency. After years of dealing with snow, ice and arctic temperatures, workers’ views of winter safety are likely frozen in place. Talking about seasonal fatigue and other issues shows them that a number of unrecognized hazards lurk in the winter months.
Second, this is a prime opportunity to warm workers to the concept of human factors. Mental and physical states like fatigue, rushing and distraction affect people all year round and in all sorts of workplace contexts. Given how prevalent human factors are, it can be hard for safety professionals to train employees to recognize and respond to human factors, which is why many workplaces get outside help.
At the very least, EHS folks can talk about human factors relating to winter hazards. This limits the scope of the conversation, making it easier for safety professions to manage. Doing so can also acclimatize workers to thinking about human factors, which sets the stage for a larger human factors-focused safety intervention down the road.
If winter safety interventions are as frigid as the ground outside, it’s time to thaw them out. Expand your discussion of winter hazards by finding a new way to talk about the physical dangers and widening the approach to what counts as a cold-weather safety issue by incorporating human factors. Come spring, you just might find that you have fewer winter-induced injuries—and a playbook to approach seasonal hazards throughout the year.
This article originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.