ONE of your employees--let's call him Joe Supervisor--is working on a job site where a backhoe is digging the foundation for a new office building. The soil is being loaded into large dump trucks. As you can imagine, the noise level from the backhoe and the trucks is almost deafening. Of course, Joe knows all about the consequence of hearing loss from exposure to noise; that's why he's wearing ear plugs.
IN the quest to treat everybody fairly, quite often we forget the wisdom contained in the expression "different strokes for different folks." Although I have been on site to some 500 workplaces in Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Europe, I've never seen more than one set of rules and procedures--or, for that matter, more than one type of safety training program.
MICHAEL White is the executive director responsible for apprenticeship and training for the Ironworkers union. He oversees numerous training programs for their members at a variety of locations, as well as classes at three permanent training centers the union maintains in New Jersey, Missouri, and California.
PROVIDING individual-specific feedback is one of the most inexpensive and powerful tools in the arsenal of a leader. And of all leadership practices, few so perfectly balance a leader's dual tasks of establishing performance expectations and creating the conditions conducive to meeting those expectations.
"THE future is here to stay." In terms of safety training, this saying refers to the use and proliferation of Internet-based courseware for delivering training messages, as well as Internet-based software for administering and managing those messages.
ADEQUATE preparation surely is the answer to many of life's challenges and dangers. It is well established that prevention's value outweighs the cost of incidents themselves (for example, the UK Department for Transport has calculated that the total value of preventing the 229,014 highway accidents in Great Britain in 2001, of which 3,176 were fatal accidents and 31,588 were serious accidents, would have been roughly $31 billion, or about $135,000 per accident).
FIRE, jolts, arcs, thermal burns, flash burns . . . . There are few workplace scenarios as potentially deadly as those that involve work with electricity or electrical items. Yet we all have a tendency to overlook the most basic of hazards in the workplace, too.
ARE you capitalizing on the benefits of the Internet to boost employee training?
OF course, we're not talking about your training sessions. And we're not talking about mine, either. It's those other guys--it's their safety training sessions we're talking about.
"GETTT iiittt done," one of our maintenance fellows good-naturedly growls at me as a "good morning" comment almost every day as he makes his job list for the day and walks a multi-story construction project in the pre-shift quiet. It seems to be the unspoken slogan for most maintenance men, from entry level to advanced engineers.
IT'S hard to judge from day to day how much you should invest in training. Even through you know training improves productivity, morale, and retention of key employees, the question of cost still remains.
MATERIALS handling often focuses on storage and transport by equipment, including forklifts. However, employee behaviors and work practices, such as using poor lifting techniques, also contribute to many injuries.
HOW many employers or employees were faced with the following scenarios in the last five years: a change in health plan vendors, a decrease in benefits coverage, or increased cost sharing for the insurance premium?
THE mission of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is to assure the safety and health of America's workers by setting and enforcing standards; providing training, outreach, and education; establishing partnerships; and encouraging continual improvement in workplace safety and health.
THE safe operation of a forklift is a skill that requires the ability to anticipate accidents. When this ability is learned through "trial and error," it is only evaluated when property damage or serious injury occurs.
AT the end of the day, the goal of occupational health and safety professionals is not only to keep all employees safe, healthy, and on the job, but also to send them home safe and sound to their families and loved ones. Getting to that goal has sparked numerous debates and philosophical discussions over the years.
THE number one cause of safety incidents isn't sprains, strains, repetitive motion injuries' or any other line item on a monthly incident report. It's a lack of commitment to safe work practices. No matter how you slice your safety statistics, virtually all injuries at any company are preventable with the right preparation and focus.