ECN Forum Forums Safety Discussion and News Occupational Safety Discussion How do you feel about Safety?

Trumpy,

That is a good question. I don't think there is a way to satisfy everyone on any issue though.

I think the first step has to be acknowledgment from everyone that some sort of a structured program is necessary. That's a big nut to crack though.

Bill

Bill,
Could you please give an example of a hypothetical "Structured Safety System"?.

Trumpy,

I was talking very generally. An example of what I would call stuctured is the Prove-Test-Prove procedure you were talking about in another thread, or Lock-Out-Tag-Out procedures. If everyone follows procedure in the same way there's less chance of anyone getting hurt.

Bill

There is another important aspect related to a ‘prove-test-prove’ sequence that sometimes gets lost in the shuffle of safety orientation. Deadly consequences are often assured if before the test, voltage levels of the equipment in question are not understood. It’s like the old “applied Simpson 260 leads to an energized 12kV bus…” disaster story.

I really believe that OSHA 29CFR1910.331-335 concepts should be a root portion of any electrical training—be the students an after-hours floor-waxing crew or transmission linemen.

Bill,
When you think about it,
with regard to Safety Training, there are 3
types of Attitudes toward this:

• The first group will go to a Safety course and take in most of the Information and Skills, given to them.
• The second group will, look at the course with an element of dubiousness, but will take in a bit of the training, only to forget these skills in a short period of time.
• The third group, will view the Safety course as a complete and utter waste of thier time and will make no effort at all, to take part in what is being taught to them.

The question I would like to raise, is HOW do you encourage those in the 2nd and 3rd groups to adopt the same attitude towards Safety as the 1st group?
Short of threatening people(which would be the wrong approach, for a start!), how do you get people to change thier way of thinking?.

Trumpy

The #2 group could be trained, and retrained possibly with a guest speaker who has been injured and is now on the 'safety circuit'. The #3 group will take a bigger 'event' to train them - such as a BAD INJURY, OR DEATH!!!

Pierre

Trumpy,

I don't know the answers. Hopefully some of our Safety Guys will share their experiences on getting people motivated.

Bill

OK Bill, I am a safety guy.

I was the facility guy for 6 years then switched safety 4 years ago (loooong story). I have realized that it is my job to be a Pain in the ___. "Don't do that, Put these on...." So how to motivate the people in groups 2 and 3. Well first of all we have weekly tool box meetings. A little too much in my opinion, but that is what we have always done. I thought about going to every 2 week tool box meetings, but that would be too hard for everyone to remember if we have a tool box meeting this week or not. Fortunatley our management backs me in the safety area (Do a search for McWane Industries and you will see that not all management does).

One thing that I have always told people is that accidents hurt. Yes the company will get a gig on the incident rate and have some more work to do, but you are the one going home in pain, not me. No one should go home from work hurt.

A couple of things that I have done. We had 2 people get cut with a box cutter so I made up a 2 page pamphlet showing the right and the wrong was to use a box cutter. I put in pictures showing the wrong way, and the right way to use a box cutter. The last picture is the cut that one of the employees got. I will e-mail it to anyone if they want. Another thing that I did was to go over all of our past accidents. I pulled out the ones that definitely could have been prevented with better housekeeping and the more serious ones that we had. Then at one of the tool box meetings I went over it with the employees. For instance we have one maintenance guy who always tells me, no one have ever tripped over an extension cord. Well guess what, I found an accident in the past of someone tripping over an extension cord.

Like I said, I know it is my job to be a PITA, but I think the employees know that I have their best intention at heart. Like I tell them about hearing protection, sure you can put in your ear plugs not all the way so it looks like you are wearing hearing protection. However you are the one that in a couple of years going "Huh, what did you say?"

More to say, but I think this has gone on long enough.
Scott

Scott,
Thanks for that!.
You've got some darn good ideas there.
I realise that it's your job, to be on everyones case, that's how messages get through.
Your people at work should think themselves lucky, that they have a Safety Guy, heapsof places haven't and they are paying for it.

Thank you for this topic.
As a former employee of several small and large contractors, I can honestly say that the majority of the firms I worked for had priorities " Other than worker safety "
There is no accounting for personal common sense when it comes to safety.
Its good to see many of you guys take a proactive stance.
If you want to go home at the end of the day with all your body parts intact, be vigilant!
Something as basic as wearing Z87 eye protection while working may seem like a drag to some people until they have a drill bit come apart and shards fly everywhere.
Or " Dont bother with the insulated socket set " its just re-tourquing the main and I dont wanna clean the noalox of the handles " and the lug breaks shorting the extension on the can.
I've always been a stickler for safety and on a few occations been grateful for the efforts.
Thats my 2 cents
Billy B