Wishing everyone a safe & healthy 2022!
Five Reasons to Work Safe Today
We all have different reasons for why we choose to do certain things and why we may not choose to do others. When it comes to working safely we should all want to choose to make the right decision. We all are different in the way we think, but there are many common reasons why we should choose to work safe. No matter what your motivator may be keep these five reasons in mind as to why we should all strive to should work safe.
- Your health. Obviously, your health and well-being should be the biggest motivator as to why you should choose to work safe. Once we lose our health or impact it severely, it may never be the same. It is important to really think about how a severe injury would change the rest of your life.
- Providing for your family. Your family depends on your ability to earn an income. When you are injured or ill you can lose that ability very quickly. Even if it is only for a short time the financial and emotional effects on your family can be drastic.
- Your reputation. While productive employees are still very much rewarded at many companies, working safely is often recognized right along with production. Your reputation at work not only affects you in your current position, but it also can affect whether or not you earn a future promotion at your company or land opportunities at other companies. No one wants to reward a risk-taker or put them in a position of power. If it is known that you are a worker that cuts corners or does not work safely it could make all the difference in whether or not you get the chance at a better opportunity.
- Your coworkers. Making the choice to take a shortcut can not only harm yourself, but you can also harm a fellow coworker. Everyone’s safety on the job depends on not only on their own choices but the choices of all the workers there.
- Your company as a whole. Whether you love the company you work for or not, the job they provide you with pays your bills. Working safely allows business to continue thus providing the opportunity for you to continue to pay your bills as well as your fellow coworkers to do the same.
Summary
Think about how the choices you make on the job not only affect you, but also how they affect your family, your coworkers, and the company as a whole. Reminding yourself of the far-reaching consequences an incident can have on many different people can reinforce making the right decision when working safely. Keep these five reasons to work safe in mind the next time you see a coworker taking risks at work. When one person chooses to take risks everyone is at risk to suffer the consequences.
Learning From Past Incidents
A lesson can be learned from almost anything that occurs to us in our lives. Workplace incidents that result in near misses, property loss, or injuries are no different. Many companies spend a lot of time, money, and effort to collect information regarding these types of incidents in order to find the root cause and try to prevent a similar event from occurring again.
Learning from Incidents Outside Your Normal Scope of Work
Many safety shares or incident investigations that are put out by a company to be reviewed at the field level may not deal directly with what work is occurring for a certain number of employees. That being said, no matter what hazard caused the injury or what the injury was that resulted, lessons can be learned from that incident and applied elsewhere. It is important to not put so much focus into the actual work task that caused the injury or what the injury was, but instead, put more attention towards what applicable lessons can be applied to the work that you do.
Real-World Example
An incident investigation is put out that discusses an injury that resulted from a dropped object incident that occurred inside of a power plant during maintenance operations. The work that is completed by your work group is excavating fill material and hauling it to another area in the landfill area outside of the plant. While these two work tasks are completely different, there are many takeaways that can be applied from the injury to the dirt work being completed.
One takeaway could be reinforcing the importance of never putting yourself in the line of fire from objects above. In the example of dirt work, operators of trucks should never get out of their cab while being loaded. Another best practice that could be mentioned is the excavator operators should never load over the cab of a truck to prevent falling debris from striking the cab or windshield.
The above example is overly simplified and brief. That being said, most investigation findings and recommendations to prevent a similar event from occurring hold a lot of valuable information that can be applied in many different ways to almost any job task being performed on a worksite. Never take any incident at face value. Lessons can always be learned from each one.
Summary
Lessons learned or safety shares that are communicated throughout a company or put out by OSHA take a lot of time to produce. Time should be taken at the field level to discuss the incident as well as takeaways that are applicable to the work that is being completed that day. Think outside the box when discussing safety shares at work.
