Caring More Deeply About Safety

Safety Sign by David Person via flickr.com

"How can we get workers to care about safety?" might not be the right question to ask to improve organization safety, says Terry Mathis in an article on EHSToday.com. 

Leaders of organizations constantly are reminded that safety must start at the top. They also have learned that it can't stop there – it must permeate all levels of the organization.

More and more leaders want to know how to do that – how to turn a workforce on to its safety potential. As one executive put it: "What is the key to getting workers to care more deeply about safety?"

This question illustrates the root of the problem: We're asking the wrong question! Why have we assumed that workers don't care enough about safety, and that making them care more is the solution? Of course workers care about safety. They are the ones who get injured when it doesn't work. Their families are the ones who have to learn to live on reduced pay and juggle medical bills while nursing a breadwinner back to health.

Read the full article on EHSToday.com. 

Safety Maturity: Three Crucial Elements of Best-in-Class Safety

Three by Hub via flickr.com

When safety is seen as a pointless expense, instead of how business is done, it can create unnecessary downtime and threats to worker safety. What does it look like when a company excels at both safety and business? Read an excerpt from EHSToday.com on this topic below. 

The human cost of occupational accidents is vast. Worker safety is a fundamental human need and requirement in industrial settings. It protects workers, prevents unnecessary downtime and satisfies standards compliance.

However, plant-floor safety long was viewed as a costly obligation that added little value to operations. Today, best-in-class manufacturers realize that combining employee behavior, procedures and technology enables them to go far beyond simple compliance to deliver improved productivity and dramatically lower injury rates.

Every manufacturer's approach to safety is unique and dependent on factors ranging from vertical market, company size and operations, potential hazards and regional safety standards. Looking beyond the makeup of a company's safety programs and examining the larger trends of the best performers can provide valuable insights into what can be accomplished when safety is implemented holistically, with consideration to a manufacturer's larger operations.

Read the full article on EHSToday.com. 

OSHA Rules to Plan for in 2014

OSHA updates are on the horizon. EHSToday.com covers the expected rules changes so you can get a head start on planning for the upcoming year. 

Twice a year, OSHA publishes a regulatory agenda as a way to keep the regulated community informed regarding upcoming activity. The latest edition was issued in July 2013 and includes a list of 26 rules in various stages of development as well as milestones scheduled for completion in 2013.

While the progress on these OSHA rules is hypnotizingly slow, it is important to stay informed because OSHA offers the regulated community the opportunity to provide feedback and input during the rulemaking process. The agency also provides extensive supporting analysis – mandated by Congress – that can help an EHS manager get a head start on assessing his or her organization's readiness for these new or changing rules. The following are summaries of three rules that OSHA is working on that should be considered when planning for 2014 and beyond.

Read the full article on EHSToday.com.

Safety 2013: How to Sell Safety to Difficult Employees and Managers

This is an excerpt from an EHS Today article.

Odds are, you’ve worked with a difficult employee or manager at some point throughout the course of your career. At the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) Safety 2013 conference, J.A. Rodriguez Jr., CSP, offered attendees tips to find common ground with difficult colleagues.

“I see the room is full today,” Rodriguez, senior manager with Raytheon Technical Services Co. LLC, said to the standing-room only crowd at Safety 2013. “Do we know some difficult people?”

If so, these audience members were in the right place. Rodriguez leaned on his 30 years of experience to outline how to turn “difficult” people into your biggest advocates. “It takes work, commitment and involvement, and it takes power within you to say it’s going to happen,” he said.

The the full article, including Rodriguez's strategies to help sell safety strategies, is available at the EHS Today website.

Healthier Workforces May Lead to a Healthier Bottom Line

This is an excerpt from an ISHN article.

Companies that build a culture of health by focusing on the well-being and safety of their workforce may yield greater value for their investors, according to a study published in the September issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM), official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).

The stock market performance of companies that had received ACOEM’s Corporate Health Achievement Award (CHAA), which annually recognizes the healthiest and safest companies in North America, was conducted at HealthNEXT LLC and analyzed by lead authors Raymond Fabius, MD, and R. Dixon Thayer, and colleagues. Companies that receive the award must be engaged in demonstrable and robust efforts to reduce health and safety risks among their employees.

To read the full article, visit ISHN.com.

Constant Improvement

This is an excerpt from an ISHN blog post.

What are you doing to be the best at what you do? Take a few moments and try the following exercise, which is a great process to improve areas in which you are already proficient.

What Activities Improve Safety The Most?

First, ask yourself what activities do you do that improve the safety of others in your area of responsibility. Really give this some time. Think of all the activities you do each day, week, month or year. Ask yourself which of these activities have the biggest impact on safety or have the potential to have the greater impact.

Write down all the activities you do that fit the criteria listed above. Take that list and do your best to prioritize it. Once you have done this, ask yourself which of these you do the best. The ones you are most competent in and feel comfortable doing. Now, look to see how you can become better in those areas.

The full article is available on the ISHN website.

OSHA's Campaign to Prevent Heat Illness in Outdoor Workers

The following is an excerpt from OSHA's Campaign to Prevent Heat Illness in Outdoor Workers.

Heat illness can be deadly. Every year, thousands of workers become sick from exposure to heat, and some even die. These illnesses and deaths are preventable.

OSHA's nationwide Heat Illness Prevention Campaign aims to raise awareness and teach workers and employers about the dangers of working in hot weather and provide valuable resources to address these concerns. Begun in 2011, the Heat Illness Prevention Campaign has reached more than 7 million people and distributed close to half a million fact sheets, posters, quick cards, training guides and wallet cards. OSHA is again joining with other federal and state agencies and non-governmental organizations to spread the word about preventing heat illness. For example, OSHA is continuing its partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Weather Service to include worker safety precautions in their Excessive Heat Watch, Warning, and Advisory Products.

The OSHA website has several resources that can be used to prevent heat illnesses:

• The Educational Resources section links to information about heat illnesses and how to prevent them. Many of these resources target vulnerable workers with limited English proficiency and/or low literacy.
• The Using the Heat Index section provides guidance to employers to develop a heat illness prevention plan.
• The Training section includes a guide/lesson plan for employers and others to use in instructing workers on heat illness.  There are links to additional resources in other languages.
• The Media Resources section includes news releases, public service announcements (PSAs), drop-in articles about heat illness prevention that you can customize to share and campaign artwork.
• The Fatality map shows locations of outdoor worker, heat-related fatalities between 2008 and 2012. It is not an exhaustive list of all worker fatalities from heat exposure. The map provides a geographic reminder that Water.Rest.Shade. are vital to providing a safe and healthful environment when working outdoors in the heat.

For the full article, more resources and information, visit OSHA's campaign website.

Good Safety is Good Business – How to Create a World-Class Safety Culture

This article was originally posted in Industrial Hygiene News.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2010 studies on occupational injuries and fatalities, there were over 3 million recorded cases of nonfatal workplace injuries and more than 4,500 fatalities in 2010 in private industry alone. Safety incidents cost businesses a vast sum in not just workers’ compensation but also by causing severe hits to productivity via lost work days, human resources time spent on incident investigation, decreased leadership efficacy and other operational and organizational costs. DuPont is proud to be known for its workplace safety and over the years has experienced first-hand how creating a safety culture leads to a more sustainable business. Following is an example of how DuPont helped one energy company undertake a safety culture initiative and the lasting benefits the company derived as a result.

Edison Mission Group (EMG) manages the competitive power generation business and other subsidiaries of Edison International, a generator and distributor of electric power and an investor in infrastructure and energy assets, including renewable energy. In 2006, an EMG company, Midwest Generation (MWG), an independent power producer that sells electricity in competitive wholesale markets, was in the midst of an increase in the severity of injuries, including fatalities, at its coal-fired plants. MWG senior leadership turned to DuPont for help in improving their safety record with the goal of achieving world-class safety performance. To accomplish this, DuPont began by evaluating Midwest Generation’s safety management against world-class systems in order to identify opportunities for improvement. From there, DuPont made recommendations on how MWG could develop a more effective safety system.

Read the full article here to learn how MWG implemented a superior safety system and the results they experienced because of it.