Tag Archives: safety training

Eye Protection, Fall Safety, General Safety Issues, Hand Protection, Head Protection, Protective Clothing, Respiratory Safety

YOUNGER WORKERS MUST BE SAFE ON THE JOB!

We want to share this important information with today’s young workers (those under age 25), and tell you how important you are to the future of our countries!  We have gathered information from the U.S. Department of Labor and the Canadian Centre for Occupational Safety and Health.  The DOL’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA’s) main role is to protect workers from workplace hazards that can cause a serious illness or injury, as well as Canada’s OSH.  Employers have the responsibility to follow established safety and health laws and common sense safety practices that prevent tragedy. 

When you begin a new job, talk it over with your parents or someone you trust, especially if you feel you are being asked to do tasks that are unsafe.  Your parents need to know of any hazards associated with your job.  Canadian experts believe, as well as those in the U.S., that many young persons are put into the job without the proper training.  You can’t just walk onto the job and be expected to know exactly what to do without being taught the fundamentals.  You have the right to a safe workplace.  Although new jobs may be intimidating, don’t be afraid to ask questions, and don’t rush just to impress your new boss.  You may be running a piece of equipment that an older worker has run for decades; hopefully, he will be your mentor and teach you the safe way to run it.  Pay close attention while being instructed. 

Job hazards that younger workers may experience are:  lifting objects, working at elevations, working with hot substances and objects, working with knives, operating mobile equipment or motor vehicles, working with food slicers, and /or working near running equipment and machinery.  Whether you are working in a food service industry, construction, warehouse, grocery store, or on a drilling rig, there are going to be hazards that you must be aware of and respect. 

In a letter from Dr. David Michaels, the Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), this sums it up, so please pay attention: 

Your Rights on the Job

Your employer must provide a workplace free of serious hazards.  Your employer must also:

  • Tell you the hazards and dangers of your job;
  • Inform you about the OSHA standards that apply to your workplace (in a language you understand);
  • Provide job safety training regarding workplace hazards and the required safety gear; (personal protective equipment)(PPE).
  • Tell you who to talk to if you have a health or safety question, and
  • Inform you what to do and who to talk to if you get hurt on the job.
  • Exercise your workplace safety rights without retaliation and discrimination; and
  • Ask OSHA to inspect your workplace. 

Ways to Stay Safe on the Job

  • To help protect yourself, you can:
  • Report unsafe conditions to your supervisor, parent, teacher or other adult that can help.
  • Don’t be afraid to ask for help or advice.
  • Wear any personal protective equipment provided to do your job.
  • Follow the safety rules.
  • Never by-pass the safety features of equipment or take short-cuts.
  • Speak Up. Ask questions. (There’s never a dumb question when it comes to safety!) 

Why, then is this message so important to young people?  Because you are the new generation of workers, and we want you work safely.  Some of our workers are as young as 15; others are high school or college students working part-time, while many are already working full-time.  

Source: OSHA; Canadian Centre for Occupational Safety & Health

General Safety Issues

POSTERS HELP DRIVE THE POINT HOME!

The industrial environment is challenged with trying to prevent accidents at the workplace.  Just think how much companies must spend on personal protective equipment, and if an accident happens – loss of work and productivity, insurance claims, material damage, loss of life, and much time spent writing accident reports. 

Because everybody acts of their own free will, sometimes it isn’t easy to get them to follow what you want them to do.  Ironically, those same people are the cause of most accidents!  If your workers don’t obey the rules that you have established, or don’t wear their protective equipment, or don’t practice good safety when they aren’t being supervised, chances are something will probably happen, and it won’t be good! 

The key to controlling accidents is safety awareness; this type of safety awareness is critical in any construction site.  One unsafe act can bring your safety record down in a few seconds. 

What is a good way to deliver your safety message? 

Researchers have found that people remember 50% more in what they see than in what they hear.  Visuals get people’s attention.  Promoting safety through visuals is very effective.

Most people enjoy posters that are humorous.  Pleasant thoughts generate more receptive learning.  Using humor drives a point that is so easy to understand when done correctly.  Cartoons can illustrate dangerous situations, which might be impossible to capture on film in real life. 

Here are a couple of examples of the safety posters found at tasco-safety.com:

DON’T BE A FOOL – BEING SAFE IS BEING COOL seems to be pretty self-explanatory.

Another one: The Key to Success Is Attitude

Good luck to all safety instructors.  We hope the posters will help get your message across.  It’s also good to stock up on several and post different ones on a periodic basis, so employees will be watching for new ideas.

One last good tip for those training employees on safety: ask them to share a close call or accident they have witnessed.  First-hand information is very powerful when someone has actually seen it or had it happen to them.

General Safety Issues, Head Protection

IN DEFENSE OF WORKPLACE SAFETY THROUGH BETTER TRAINING (GUEST POST)

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By Kyle O’Brien

 Workplace safety is a paramount issue with any business.  Whether you’re a meat-packing business or a coffee shop, safety concerns abound.  Thus, having your entire staff up to speed with sufficient training on ways to prevent accidents, as trivial as one tutorial may seem, is something that should go beyond the basic written words inside the employee handbook.  That’s not to say a handbook is useless.  Far from it.  It’s how management discerns workplace safety, with how certain equipment is to be handled, what protective layers should be issued and worn at all times…the list should, and does go on.   

From obtaining better training videos to ensuring each and every employee has a firm grasp of what’s been shown, there are numerous points to follow through with regards to safety training.  

Understanding The Costs of Improper Training 

Before you begin to assess your company’s workplace safety policies and training, I’ll share one example of how some oversights in the electrical industry – specifically towards improper maintenance of electrical systems – can cost businesses in more ways than fines.  A Siemens report back in 2010 uncovered a list of violations of electrical maintenance with certain buildings.  Spanning 25 facilities, OSHA handed out more than $5 million in fines to employers who failed to train their employees on servicing electrical systems in the building.  Some of the violations were a result of not having the right tools.  More major violations were given to not putting up proper warning signs for specific areas, thus potentially endangering employees to shock, electrocution and arc flash. 

Putting aside the monetary issues, the heart of the matter is the safety of employees and all who would walk around the “hazard zones”.  The report stated that every workday, arc-flash incidents had hospitalized five to seven workers at those buildings in the U.S.  Around 30,000 arc-flash incidents in total, with around 7,000 of those incidents involving burn injuries.  And that’s just with regards to a specific industry.  Employers who don’t first research the risks/dangers of prior incidents are setting themselves up to repeat them.   

Creating Easier Ways To Engage Employees 

Safety training, computer training, compliance training — there’s more than enough areas for a business to cover with their employees.  Some choose to spend half a day, maybe less than that, sequestering entire departments for a training seminar.  There will be packets, referendums, company policies on what to do in an event.  And not to say that employees are prone to be disinterested throughout, well, there’s a good chance streamlined, succinct methods will fare better with how each employee digests the information. 

It’s why better-developed training videos can command more eyes and ears.  Many older training videos of the 1980’s were attempts to add humor and a storyline to someone operating the grill at a fast food restaurant.  The sad reality was that it was grainy, had cacophonous background music and took too long to define instructions and safety measures.  If that same effort was applied to a training video on how to operate a crane on a job site, you’d most likely have confused employees who’d just rather settle for a succinct video displaying the key statistics of operating with caution. 

Creating a video that has a clear and direct narrator displaying stats like the number of injuries reported on common job sites and whether they’ve worsened or gotten better, how certain “hot spots” of the site should be littered with warning signs, Safety hardhat requirements and ways to be better aware of one’s surroundings and other key points, your training segments would go much further to making safety measures more tangible to employees. 

Have Q & A Sessions After Each Video 

Once you’ve wrapped up the safety training video or session, the best way to make every safety measure mentioned stick is to have an immediate Q & A.  While it might be hard to get employees to chat after sitting through a lengthy training video (which is why you should cap your videos to shorter time limits, or break up meatier safety lessons into segments), it’s still important to at least entertain questions.  Doesn’t matter how obscure a question could be, no stone should be left unturned when it comes to workplace precautions.   

And Q & A’s should be a continual process, because you can’t expect every employee to reach expert levels once they leave the room.  Maybe it means having managers around the first time a chef starts to work with a new grill, or have someone supervising employees first go-around with heavy machinery types such as the Knuckleboom Loader, Feller Bunchers, Pipelayers and other rather complex and powerful equipment?   

Final Thoughts 

The main thing is your initiative to stay on top of important safety concerns with the workplace and that you and your entire organization understand that accidents happen every day, in every workplace across the country.  But it’s how you lessen the numbers through awareness, through training videos and whether they’ll be a continual process in education, through warning signs being posted in key spots around the workplace or job site, and most important, through a passion to stay on top of creating as safe an environment as possible. 

Author Bio:  Kyle is a frequent blogger covering the business industry on a range of topics from employee safety, business leadership, motivation practices and other themes.  He is a consultant for an eLearning company, ej4, which helps create informative and innovative training videos and business book summaries to help further increase employee knowledge of the workplace.

First Aid Safety, General Safety Issues

NEW HIRES NEED YOUR HELP

During this time of a bad economy, there are persons that are desperate for a job, and they may be happy to take one that has nothing to do with the type of work they have done in the past.  People from all professions have found themselves ousted from occupations that they have been doing for years, and are willing to take whatever comes their way, even when they may be overqualified, or lack experience in the particular job they take.  When this happens, becoming familiar with a new work situation and understanding safety issues are two of the most important things they must learn. 

It’s a known fact that during the first month on a new job, new hires are susceptible to injuries.  They should receive basic safety training from the very beginning.  Getting them acquainted with their coworkers and new surroundings is very important.  Other workers can serve as mentors and see that they understand the requirements of their job before letting them proceed alone.  In a work environment that involves machinery, the new hires must be properly taught the use of the machines, all about tools, and hazardous processes.

Of course, in occupations where Personal Protective Equipment is required, the new employee should be instructed to wear it at all times while on the job.  Whether it’s head, hand, eye, hearing, or any other type of protection, new workers should understand how to wear and maintain each particular item that they are furnished.  

Knowing how to fill out an accident report or a near miss report is another important part of orientation.  If there is an on-the-job injury, they must realize that it is urgent to notify a supervisor at the time of the injury.  If chemicals are involved in the job, understanding about Material Safety Data Sheets is a must. 

We’ve all been through the “first job” experience.  Everyone understands how nerve-wracking it can be to tackle and understand all that is expected of you.  Put yourself in the place of a new young hire, eager to learn, but somewhat overwhelmed.  You may be able to teach that person lessons that will stay throughout his/her career.  For someone who is starting all over, do whatever you can to make his/her transition a little easier. 

Take your job seriously.  There’s no room for horseplay in the work area.  Time for fun is during breaks, not when someone might get hurt while working.   Most companies train their employees on what to do in case of an accident, or how to call for help. First aid kits should be available in all areas of the workplace. 

Even though Human Resources Departments complete a checklist of items while conducting an orientation, it takes time and experience for a new hire to really get the big picture.  Once they are on the job, workers must not be afraid to ask their supervisors questions.  Paying attention to the answer may keep everyone safer.  Good luck to everyone who is starting a job, and best of luck to those who are looking for employment.