Unfortunately, many organizations have a false perception that merely employing someone in a safety capacity is a risk control, as in, “Your Honor, we did our due diligence in safety… see, we hired a Safety Person (points to the ‘Safety Person’).”
This will be a series of short articles designed to provide a different perspective—a paradigm shift -- in terms of how most of you think about industrial safety. And how most of you think about accidental injury causation in general.
U.S. Navy Captain Mike Abrashoff was given command of the USS Benfold at age 36, making him the youngest commanding officer in the Pacific fleet. His challenge was daunting: the destroyer with 310 sailors was a notable loser, with low morale and the highest turnover in the Navy.
Many safety and health pros early in their careers face the challenge of establishing their credibility.
Individual oversights and errors can and will eventually lead to unwanted consequences. However, we need multiple checks and balances that limit fallout and the continuance of loss, or possibly, an egregious event.
Creating a workplace culture for employees facing mental health issues
November 5, 2019
The U.S. Department of Labor has launched a new resource to help employers better understand mental health issues, and obtain guidance on how to cultivate a work environment that supports employees with related conditions.
Google “safety culture” and you get about 1,600,000,000 results in 0.95 seconds. Safety and health managers have long known the importance of culture – the organization’s values, beliefs and leadership - on safety, morale, productivity, engagement, presenteeism and absenteeism. Culture has been at the top of safety and health issues for the past ten years at least.
Our company has been roofing/remodeling injury-free since inception in 2004. The behavior of people is the predominant cause of accidents and the variable that is most easily changed. Although this article is based on our roofing experiences, the principles are easily applied to any industry, especially those that involve hard labor, high turnover, or dangerous conditions.
Deloitte (2014) describes the modern learner in its infographic, “Meet the Modern Learner.” The infographic shows multiple constraints employees face when developing necessary skills. Many writers and training professionals interpret this to say that people today learn differently. Learning has evolved with the office.
Safety professionals work diligently to engage both leaders and employees. But there is often a challenge: leaders wish their employees would just "be careful" without doing diligence to hazard identification, assessment and control. The result: workers claim leaders are only concerned with productivity and budgets.
Most readers are familiar with the common phrase, “The errors of our ways.“ So why am I talking about the intention of our ways -- not errors – in this article?