Safety Training & Incentives

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The responsibilities and expectations placed on supervisors are enormous at times—production, workforce management, quality control, budgets, and of course safety. These “deliverables” communicated to them by management require the supervisor to work within the employers system to effectively perform their duties.

Adapting to the safe work practices of NFPA 70E likely means some major changes in how your electrical workers have done things in the past. Your electrical workers likely didn’t think twice about opening an energized 480 volt electrical panel. Now with standards in place, they must first determine arc flash hazard levels, PPE, safety boundaries and fill out an energized work permit.

Telecommunications giant Verizon has agreed to provide enhanced electrical safety training to its New York field technicians, following the fatal electrocution of a worker in Brooklyn on Sept. 14, 2011.

Ron Spataro, Director of Marketing, and Steve Foutch, Vice President sales and Operations, both of AVO Training Institute, Dallas, TX (www.avotraining.com) (877-594-3156; 214-330-3522) answer questions from ISHN magazine about electrical safety training.

In 2005 I completed a dissertation on the effectiveness of safety awards on reducing at-risk behaviors. Although not primarily directed at safety, I was surprised to learn that there is a goodly amount of literature on the subject; particularly within the behavioral sciences.

Better late than never seems to be the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) reaction to new Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules regarding pilot training. NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman commended the FAA for finalizing the long-awaited rule, “which addresses recommendations stemming from accidents dating back more than two decades.”

Companies now have an easy way to train Spanish- and Canadian French-speaking employees on critical hazard communication topics, with J. J. Keller's new online editions of its HazCom:What You Need To Know training program.

I have heard that OSHA may ban safety incentive programs. My company has used an employee incentive program that provides a bonus for meeting quality, productivity, and safety performance targets. The program has been very successful, has reduced injuries and is popular with employees.

Over the past couple of weeks I have criticized the mad rush of snake oil sales men from BBS to the new –found goldmine of one form or another of “culture-based” safety.  I like to alternate my posts from the critical, to the (hopefully) helpful.  Much ado is made about the holy grail of injury prevention, but scant little has been offered around sustaining change.