Psychology in the Workplace

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During emergencies at facilities, a lot of different fast-paced activities are often happening simultaneously. Objectives can include accounting for all personnel, putting out a fire, containing a chemical release, coordinating with outside resources and many others.

This will be a series of short articles designed to provide a different perspective—a paradigm shift -- in terms of how most of you think about industrial safety. And how most of you think about accidental injury causation in general.

One of the best ways to get started with a workplace mental health initiative is to learn about what other employers have done, especially those of a similar size and/or nature.

The U.S. Department of Labor has launched a new resource to help employers better understand mental health issues, and obtain guidance on how to cultivate a work environment that supports employees with related conditions.

Google “safety culture” and you get about 1,600,000,000 results in 0.95 seconds. Safety and health managers have long known the importance of culture – the organization’s values, beliefs and leadership - on safety, morale, productivity, engagement, presenteeism and absenteeism. Culture has been at the top of safety and health issues for the past ten years at least.

Most readers are familiar with the common phrase, “The errors of our ways.“ So why am I talking about the intention of our ways -- not errors – in this article?

It is called the Batter’s Eye. You can find one in every Major League Baseball park and stadium. But the question is, where are they located? And the next question is, how do they work?

A rather simple description of culture is: That’s just the way we do things around here. From a safety & health perspective, the way things are done stays the same until someone or some group, with the competency and power to make change, becomes dissatisfied with the S&H status quo.