It is a common misconception that the safety staff has the responsibility for removing any hazards or hazardous conditions in the workplace. There true challenge is to get these employees to help identify the hazards in their area so they can be reduced or eliminated. The most successful example helps prevent injury from falling debris at construction sites; hard hats.
When an employee first walks into a new work environment, they see the physical environment for the first time, and sometimes things jump out at them as unusual or even dangerous. An unlit corridor with uneven flooring is immediately obvious to someone knew, but to those traversing the corridor repeatedly, it is normal. This ability to incorporate unusual, even dangerous conditions is part of what makes risk management problematic.
It is not possible to relegate the identification and removal of hazards to a single individual in a large organization. Combined with employees reluctance to point out problems and hazards, the process of finding and eliminating these them is made even more difficult and the solution becomes a generic, be careful approach. Removing or reducing the dangers then only happen after an accident.
Blood priority is how safety professionals describe the process of incremental introduction of safeguards piece by piece as the situations cause damage, injury or death. The problem is that in the absence of an accident, efforts to increase safety fall on deaf ears. For those things already in place, safety staff have to remind workers why the protective policy or equipment was introduced to gain compliance.
Human nature has a deeply ingrained belief that when it comes to accidents and misfortune, it might happen to others, but is unlikely to affect someone here. There is, in no small part, a general belief that those who become the victim of a workplace mishap did something wrong. It is a notion that common sense will prevent accidents, and those who experience them are somehow incompetent.
Reality bears proof that this is simply not the case, there is no evidence that any significant proportion of injured workers are incompetent or careless. Injuries happen to all manner of employee, because they are all human and are susceptible to the most dangerous of things--distraction. Anything that causes a distraction or alters the normal pattern of behavior can result in an injury.
At one time or another, everyone gets distracted, whether it is something in their home life, a bad experience or even illness. Because of this the airline industry takes special precautions, since a single mistake can be catastrophic. They use multiple pilots to crew an aircraft, and every phase of flight is run by checklist.
Over time most occupations have been analyzed and appropriate procedures put in place, and in addition personal protective gear has been developed for extra protection. But many employees find this equipment tedious and unnecessary and do not use it. The gold standard for such personal protective equipment overcame all forms of resistance and became a symbol of respected work on construction sites; hard hats.
When an employee first walks into a new work environment, they see the physical environment for the first time, and sometimes things jump out at them as unusual or even dangerous. An unlit corridor with uneven flooring is immediately obvious to someone knew, but to those traversing the corridor repeatedly, it is normal. This ability to incorporate unusual, even dangerous conditions is part of what makes risk management problematic.
It is not possible to relegate the identification and removal of hazards to a single individual in a large organization. Combined with employees reluctance to point out problems and hazards, the process of finding and eliminating these them is made even more difficult and the solution becomes a generic, be careful approach. Removing or reducing the dangers then only happen after an accident.
Blood priority is how safety professionals describe the process of incremental introduction of safeguards piece by piece as the situations cause damage, injury or death. The problem is that in the absence of an accident, efforts to increase safety fall on deaf ears. For those things already in place, safety staff have to remind workers why the protective policy or equipment was introduced to gain compliance.
Human nature has a deeply ingrained belief that when it comes to accidents and misfortune, it might happen to others, but is unlikely to affect someone here. There is, in no small part, a general belief that those who become the victim of a workplace mishap did something wrong. It is a notion that common sense will prevent accidents, and those who experience them are somehow incompetent.
Reality bears proof that this is simply not the case, there is no evidence that any significant proportion of injured workers are incompetent or careless. Injuries happen to all manner of employee, because they are all human and are susceptible to the most dangerous of things--distraction. Anything that causes a distraction or alters the normal pattern of behavior can result in an injury.
At one time or another, everyone gets distracted, whether it is something in their home life, a bad experience or even illness. Because of this the airline industry takes special precautions, since a single mistake can be catastrophic. They use multiple pilots to crew an aircraft, and every phase of flight is run by checklist.
Over time most occupations have been analyzed and appropriate procedures put in place, and in addition personal protective gear has been developed for extra protection. But many employees find this equipment tedious and unnecessary and do not use it. The gold standard for such personal protective equipment overcame all forms of resistance and became a symbol of respected work on construction sites; hard hats.
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