North American Occupational Safety and Health Week, or NAOSH Week, occurs every year during the first full week of May. Occupational Safety and Health Professional Day (OSHP Day) falls on the Wednesday of that week.

The American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) urges everyone to get involved in NAOSH Week in an effort to better educate the public about the positive benefits a safe workplace provides not only for workers, but for their families, friends, businesses, their local communities and the global community.

Goals and Successes

The goal is to focus employers, employees, partners and the public on the importance of preventing injury and illness in the workplace, at home and in the community.

The success of NAOSH Week is rooted in a community–based approach. Across the country, NAOSH Week events and activities are coordinated by local, provincial and/or regional committees, comprised primarily of volunteers, who share a focus and vision of safer workplaces and communities. Partnerships with government, business, suppliers, CSSE Chapters, community health organizations and other safety groups provide the support, resources and network necessary to manage the NAOSH Week plans.

Every year, the ultimate goal of NAOSH Week is the prevention of injury & illness in the workplace, at home and in the community. For the past 26 years NAOSH Week has had some great themes to guide us in our continued efforts to prevent workplace accidents.

In 2014, the NAOSH Week theme is a call to action: “Make Safety a Habit!” Being safe, whether at home, work or play, should be as second nature as putting on a seatbelt when you get into a vehicle.

Commit: All you need is one month to commit to Making Safety a Habit. After this time, your new habit is easy to sustain.

Be Consistent: Make sure you do it every day. Without consistency, your new habit will be much harder to sustain.

Keep It Simple: Pick one thing to make you safer and focus on making it a habit.

Involve Others: Engage other colleagues to create the same good safety habit with you.

Do it for Yourself: Because getting home at the end of the day doesn’t just happen.

Borrowing from Merriam Webster we can define a “safety habit” as a usual way or manner of behaving in order to accomplish a task in such a way as to prevent injury and accident: a manner that a person does often in a regular repeated way.

Numerous safety publications and experts explain how most accidents are the result of various substandard acts or behaviors. If we can reduce the frequency of some of these substandard acts or increase the frequency of the “positive” acts we can reduce the frequency of accidents. We believe we can accomplish all of this by working to build solid safety habits.

Join your colleagues and individuals from across North America helping to make a difference by “Making Safety a Habit.” Why not use NAOSH Week 2014 … first week of May … as your opportunity to make a difference?

Sources: www.csse.org; www.naosh.org