Safety pros to OSHA: What about personal responsibility? (5/26)
Earlier this year OSHA held a day-long marathon “OSHA Listens” webcast with agency honcho Dr. David Michaels listening for nine hours to opinions across the country about what issues the agency should and should not tackle in the next few years. ISHN asked readers to prioritize from a list of agency-related issues, and a number of safety pros echoed the sentiments of this professional:
“I do not usually respond to these types of things but more and more recently I am thinking about how to go to the next level with our employees. I suspect many businesses are not in a position to terminate the employment of each employee who fails to obey every safety rule and regulation. We constantly preach safety and have very good injury and incident numbers but we still see many things done inappropriately.
“I would like to see OSHA do more with personal responsibilities, for that matter I’d like to see the government in general do more with that one.
“In safety though, it makes sense to me to hold companies as well as workers accountable for their actions. Safety isn’t confined just to the workplace and we know employees who perform unsafe acts at home will most likely do the same things at work.
“I can imagine a culture change in the general public which would eventually make people safer in general and specifically at work and this probably would not take 100 years.
“Just my thoughts, thanks for listening.”
“I do not usually respond to these types of things but more and more recently I am thinking about how to go to the next level with our employees. I suspect many businesses are not in a position to terminate the employment of each employee who fails to obey every safety rule and regulation. We constantly preach safety and have very good injury and incident numbers but we still see many things done inappropriately.
“I would like to see OSHA do more with personal responsibilities, for that matter I’d like to see the government in general do more with that one.
“In safety though, it makes sense to me to hold companies as well as workers accountable for their actions. Safety isn’t confined just to the workplace and we know employees who perform unsafe acts at home will most likely do the same things at work.
“I can imagine a culture change in the general public which would eventually make people safer in general and specifically at work and this probably would not take 100 years.
“Just my thoughts, thanks for listening.”
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