Be it great fires, floods due to heavy rain or IT outages due to hacker attacks: When it comes to crisis management, federal and state governments as well as cities and municipalities with blue-light organizations are all in the same boat, metaphorically speaking. Industrial companies also have to plan and prepare for emergencies in order to secure production and business processes and minimize economic losses.
A desire to go beyond regulatory compliance and increase the safety of employees is behind a Minnesota manufacturer’s use of OSHA’s On-Site Consultation Program, through the Minnesota OSHA (MNOSHA) Workplace Safety Consultation (WSC). That’s how Malco Products, Specific Benefit Corporation (SBC), achieved an OSHA Safety and Health Achievement Recognition Program (SHARP) designation in 2004 – a designation it has maintained to this day.
On average, Americans working full-time spend more than one-third of their day, five days per week at the workplace. The use of effective workplace programs and policies can reduce health risks and improve the quality of life for American workers. Learn more about workplace health promotion and how to design, implement, and evaluate effective workplace health programs.
Sitting for long periods of time has emerged as a significant health threat, associated with everything from obesity to metabolic syndrome, which can include high blood pressure, and high blood sugar and cholesterol levels.
More companies and individuals are taking steps to reduce sitting time by moving to standing workstations, which have surfaces at heights that allow the user to stand while typing on a keyboard and viewing a monitor.
A fatality earlier this month involving a hydraulic breaker represents a sharp uptick in U.S. mining industry deaths caused by machine accidents, according to the Mine Safety and Health Admininstration (MSHA).
The 32-year-old general manager/owner and the excavator operator were in the process of positioning the excavator for a motor exchange when the hydraulic breaker attachment fell off the excavator and hit the victim.
One of the biggest wake-up calls I had recently was when I realized the detrimental impact biases have in the world of safety. Most people recognize that biases exist in “the other guy” but fail to see these preconceived notions in themselves. SPOILER ALERT: We all have them, and they are putting all of us at risk.
Compared to small and "micro" businesses, larger companies have made more progress toward introducing the Total Worker Health (TWH) approach to worker health and safety, reports the August Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
"Our results indicate a need for intervention research that specifically targets microbusinesses and small businesses, especially in light of the outsized health and safety risks encountered in these sectors of the economy," write Liliana Tenney, MPH, and colleagues of Colorado School of Public Health, University of Colorado, Aurora.
Leaders may not be at the “front line of safety,” but they must have an ability to “see safety” - to understand how visual bias impacts safety programs and how those biases influence not only their operating staff, but also themselves.
By understanding their own visual literacy gaps, and those of others, leaders can develop a higher degree of empathy for the reality of getting work done safely.
This week, Aug. 12 – 18, is Safe + Sound Week, an annual, nationwide event that recognizes the successes of workplace safety and health programs and offers information and ideas on how to keep America's workers safe.
According to OSHA, last year more than 2,700 businesses participated in the program, which is aimed at helping employers get their programs started, energize an existing one, or recognizing their safety successes.
HSE audits, permits to work, job safety analyses (JSAs), pre-task HSE reviews, safety observations, ‘hazard hunts,’ management / leadership walk-abouts, hazard IDs, . . . what do all of these ‘tools,’ or processes, have in common?
While it is not a complete listing, it does represent a subset of widely-used and generally accepted tools used by organizations to help manage HSE risk on an ongoing day-to-day basis.
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