Organizations that care about their employees care about safety and will go to great lengths to communicate the importance of working safely. Regular safety meetings, creative safety contests, safety Web sites, sharing lessons learned—safety communicators tend to use a variety of methods to distribute procedures and critical safety information to help employees plan and perform work.
A quick scan of recent newspaper headlines reveals many employees who may not have received adequate on-the-job safety training: three employees electrocuted in a confined space situation, several dead from an crane collapse, toxic chemical exposures, an excavation cave-in on unprotected employees (with proper shields on site), along with BBP exposures and improper use of PPE.
Maybe you’ve seen the T-shirt: “A bad day of fishing is better than a good day of work.” But what about when a bad day of fishing is a bad day of work, as it is for the estimated 38,000 men and women who fish commercially in the United States?
Don’t be soft on soft-tissue injuries. These problems—typically, strains and sprains to the back, shoulders, neck, and other areas—plague numerous organizations and, even worse, often escalate as workforces age. Initially, many companies try to injury-proof the workplace, from ergonomic design fixes to job redesign/ rotation.
Perhaps the most common criterion for specifying hearing protection devices (HPDs), the NRR or Noise Reduction Rating—that bold number on every box of ear plugs—is about to change, hopefully for the better.
HR practitioners must actively seek key areas for improvement for themselves, their roles, and the company, taking action to defend their role where possible.
What makes the best in HR really the best? Human resources is a complex,multifaceted field that requires professionals to have the ability to juggle priorities and excel at a number of tasks, from the sometimes tedious to the often strategic.
The American Heart Association estimates hypertension, or high blood pressure, affects about 73 million people ages 20 and older. In 2004, according to AHA, high blood pressure was the cause of death for 54,707 people in the United States.
It’s no secret that the cost to acquire worker’s compensation insurance is extremely expensive in the United States. Every day, employers deal with these rising costs, as well as the related costs of injury pay. Employers spent approximately $50.8 billion in 2003 on wage payments and medical care for workers hurt on the job, according to Liberty Mutual, a leading global insurer.
On Jan. 16, 2002, two workers were killed and eight others were injured when they inhaled hydrogen sulfide gas leaked from an underground process sewer at the Georgia-Pacific Naheola mill in Pennington, Ala. Among the injured were workers who attempted to assist their colleagues from the deadly cloud. The gas was the product of a sudden, uncontrolled chemical reaction taking place in the sewer as the men worked above.
The writing of this article follows on the heels of a meeting between the author and the chief deputy attorney general of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The purpose of that meeting was to investigate and discuss the circumstances of a fatal Pennsylvania mining accident.
Working a summer job many years ago on a crew of a county road repair department was my first full-time outdoor employment. Flagging for our paving machines and dump trucks that first day was a brutal education, but not because of the pace, the dust, the heat, or the toil. It was rough because I hadn’t known to bring my own jug of water. On Day Two and every work day thereafter, I was much better prepared.
With somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 million people employed, construction is one of the largest industries in the United States. That’s a lot of people to send home safe every day. Construction work sites present a number of potential safety hazards; employers, with increased awareness, are emphasizing safe work habits to reduce injuries.
It was bound to happen. Medical professionals warned about it more than 50 years ago when a surprisingly effective tool for fighting infections first entered into broad use in the 1950s. If we step back a bit more to 1939, when two European scientists used penicillin for the first time on a human patient, it becomes obvious why antibiotics have been so heavily prescribed to fight infections.
It is hard to argue against the importance of the need for eyewashes and showers in the workplace, given the reported injuries to and incident statistics of workers who require medical treatment of some kind. Take eye injuries, for example—there are 800,000 reported eye injuries in the American workforce each year, many of which are caused by exposure to chemical hazards.
Senior managers have become increasingly aware of Safety’s potential returns, well beyond loss reduction. And Safety culture is an especially hot topic among leaders who sense something is missing— that performance could be better.
Two safety tradeshows highlighted May and early June.
First up was the New York Incentive Rewards & Recognition Show, which took place May 7-8. One of this show's biggest incentives each year is its location; another is the chance to experience an all-in-one combination of exhibits, on-floor Power Sessions, and paid seminars focused on the show's theme, "Brands Powering People, People Powering Brands."
Then, returning to the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas for the first time since 2005, the National Fire Protection Association's annual World Safety Conference & Exposition will be held June 2-5, 2008, and promises to be the event's largest outing ever.
There’s a battle going on among professionals conducting office ergonomic evaluations, and you may not even be aware of it. Often, one of the hardest things for a professional is to change the way you do things—to change what you recommend to your clients. But this is exactly what we must do when we learn about research with practical applications.