I often remind audiences more injuries occur off the job than at work. With all the focus we place on workplace safety, I think most people must not be aware of this fact. For many of my clients, their safety record is so good the safest part of their employees’ day begins when they go through the gate to work.
How often do you or the leadership of your company share safety statistics with your employees? At a recent presentation, the corporate safety leader took a moment to talk with the employees. Earlier in the meeting, it was shared with the employees that the previous year they had a 1.2 OSHA recordable rate.
As a child, I loved watching the cartoon show and character, Popeye. Most memorable are the fits Popeye would take when he lost patience with someone or was frustrated by something. But before he took extreme action, he'd typically say, in his own peculiar way, “Enoughs is enoughs and I can’t takes it no more!”
"Absolutely, yes." In one of my presentations, I ask the question, "What is the opposite of love?" One of the most common answers is, "Hate." While that is not wrong, I think the real opposite of love is "apathy." If love is caring about someone else the opposite is clearly the total lack of caring.
I am a big fan of PolitiFact and MythBusters. PolitiFact is an independent fact-checking journalism website. It is a division of my local newspaper, the Tampa Bay Times. MythBusters is a television program on the Discovery Channel. The show's hosts test the validity of rumors, myths, movie scenes, adages and Internet videos.
In 1913, when the Labor Department was founded, the U.S. workforce looked a lot different. Child labor was commonplace, and there were fewer opportunities for women and people of color.
A product might be on the market for years when, suddenly, public outcry causes it to be taken off the shelves. When consumer reaction causes a crisis, companies don’t have time to focus on the underlying factors that created it. Once the storm blows over, there’s rarely an opportunity for product stewards to step back and reflect.
When new safety programs or processes are rolled out unsuccessfully, there has almost always been a failure to determine either the factors necessary for success, the factors that can contribute to failure, or some combination of both.
People are hard-wired to take shortcuts due to the balance between energy intake (i.e. food) and energy output (i.e. effort spent on an activity) which means we automatically take the “path of least resistance.”
About 15 years ago, I read an important engagement story regarding a line worker with a major automotive manufacturer in the United States. The story evolved from an organizational push to gain more involvement from their workers at a time when it was critical.
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