Preventive safety evaluations help protect personnel and equipment, cut costly downtime and losses, and minimize liability exposure. This article highlights common areas of hazards in a manufacturing facility, and some potential solutions to explore.
We know that most of us don’t like to be bounded by a set of rules around our actions and our behaviors; however, there is no sustainable safety culture if there is no operational discipline.
The total cost of safety cannot be underestimated. A life is priceless. Direct costs such as worker’s compensation, medical and legal expenses, and indirect safety costs such as training, accident investigation, implementation of corrective measures, lost productivity, equipment and property repairs add up quickly.
Standard teaching techniques apply to all types of learning. But safety training exists on a level of its own given the life and death stakes involved. While safety professionals need to find teaching ideas that work, many find themselves falling back on the same tired slide presentations.
The hard part is getting teams to buy into the team vision to play selfless and trust that if they focus on all the intangibles, the scoring will come and at the end of the game the scoreboard will reflect their efforts.
Safety is a responsibility. A well-run safety program or safety culture really isn't possible unless management takes on safety as a job, and maintenance and quality and production and shipping and HR and all other departments are prepped to assume their particular responsibilities for safety.
It’s something of a tradition in workplace safety to observe how different company cultures react to bad news about accidents, hazardous conditions, OSHA penalties, worker complaints and negative press. In my experience, most of the time defenses go up immediately.
One safety culture dimension does not get the scrutiny and attention it deserves – perception gaps in organizations. It can easily get overlooked, and create problems that relate directly to safety, productivity, and morale.
James Reason’s Swiss Cheese Model of safety is a remarkably simple way to think about how organizational culture and climate turn into injuries and incidents.
The oil boom in North Dakota and elsewhere has claimed the lives of dozens of oil field workers. Fatalities from the boom are drawing renewed attention from government scientists.
