This Date in History – April Fools Day
Horseplay Isn't Funny - Even on April 1st Be skeptical about anything you read, see on the Internet or hear on TV, the radio or even the phone. At least on Friday. Why? Because Friday is April Fool’s Day. You might wonder how the whole April Fool’s business got started, especially if you’re a history buff like me. I decided to do a little research. Here’s what I found out. First, foremost and fittingly, nobody knows the exact history of April Fool’s Day. The current thinking is that it began in France in 1582 when King Charles IX did what [...]
The Power of Storytelling in eLearning
Most people have words they don’t like. For me, it’s office jargon like ‘bandwidth, ‘blue sky thinking’ or ‘pinging’ emails. For my brother, the most irritating word in the world is ‘delightful’. Years ago, he worked at an estate agency where ‘delightful’ was seriously overused; it featured in every advert and every property description. It even trickled down into normal conversation – delightful coffees, lunches, dates and holidays were had by all. Because of this experience, there are few things less delightful for him than the word itself. Why am I telling you this? There’s no chance I’d have remembered [...]
Using Discipline to Make the Workplace Safer
Discipline has gotten a bad rap. In the workplace setting, those who decry discipline include both the administrators who should be dishing it out and representatives of employees who should be receiving it. The end result is that discipline often doesn’t get imposed even when it’s richly deserved. And in the realm of health and safety, absence of discipline is a recipe for disaster. The Discrediting of Discipline Once upon a time, discipline was lauded as a fundamental value. In some cultures, it still is. So why has it become such a bugaboo for us? After all, we would all [...]
Protecting Workers in the Cold
Are you doing enough to protect your workers against the risks of cold-stress? If one of your workers should suffer a serious or fatal cold-stress injury, could you and your company be liable? When Is Cold Stress a “Recognized Hazard”? The first thing to clarify is when cold stress becomes a recognized hazard. It’s not temperature alone. It’s how cold the air actually feels on the body. There are 4 factors that employers must consider in determining how cold is too cold: Temperature of the air; Wind or other factors causing the air to move at a high velocity—thereby making it [...]
How to Provide Cold Stress Safety Training
As with other hazards, worker education and training are crucial to preventing cold stress. By the time they complete their training, workers need to understand: What cold stress is; Why it’s dangerous; How to protect themselves from the danger; How to recognize the signs and symptoms of the different forms of cold stress; and How to respond if they or a co-worker exhibits such signs or symptoms. Here’s how to provide introductory cold stress training to your own workers. GET THEIR ATTENTION: Start out by letting workers know what’s at stake. Explain that being in the cold too long isn’t just uncomfortable but dangerous because [...]
Workplace Safety in 2022
As the Omicron variant is spreading and rapidly becoming the dominant strain across North America, there are resurging issues with testing, vaccinations, quarantine timelines, social distancing and everything that we have all been moving away from for the last few months. You're not alone in feeling like you are perpetually stuck in a grindhouse version of Groundhog's Day - only it's the same six month pattern over and over and over again. You're not alone in being exhausted, or feeling like you just want to throw in the towel. There was a sense of hubris when the mRNA vaccines were approved. [...]
CEO on the Soapbox
The first week of 2022 offers an opportunity to stand on a soapbox and do a little bit of forecasting for the year ahead, so here goes. Between the massive potential fines and civil liabilities for not having a safe workplace and the need to retain motivated employees, employers will focus even more attention in 2022 on workplace health and safety. If you aren’t, you should be! In addition, with Omicron and the further spread of COVID-19, governments and private businesses are leading the way with compulsory vaccinations and policies that basically say “be vaccinated or get fired” and they [...]
Winter Means Training Workers on Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
After over 25 years of preaching and teaching it, I’ve come to realize that safety is a culture, not just a workday activity. It is a part of our lives. Accordingly, successful safety programs need to address not just workplace but home injuries. As the weather turns cold, there is one important home safety topic that I take up with my employees: Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning. Here’s what I tell them. High Cost of Fuel Increases CO Risks Mid-fall is the start of the CO season. This is when we start firing up furnaces, wood burners, space heaters and the [...]
Seven Statistics on Working in Winter
From slippery elevated work areas to white-knuckle driving in blizzard conditions, winter poses some serious challenges to workers across much of North America. Here are seven statistics related to working in winter conditions: When climbing onto or off of equipment during the snowy season, workers should maintain three points of contact to increase their stability and reduce their chances of slipping or falling. One way to help keep your balance when walking on slippery surfaces is to keep your hands out of your pockets. Two things to avoid before shoveling snow are caffeine and nicotine, because they increase your heart rate and may cause [...]
COVID Mandate News on Both Sides of the Border
Today (January 13, 2021), the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the OSHA's emergency temporary standard requiring businesses with more than 100 employees to ensure workers are vaccinated against the coronavirus or wear masks and undergo weekly COVID-19 testing. The majority opinion said that although Congress has given OSHA the power to regulate dangers in the workplace, "it has not given that agency the power to regulate public health more broadly. Requiring the vaccination of 84 million Americans, selected simply because they work for employers with more than 100 employees, certainly falls in the latter category." However, SCOTUS allowed the federal government [...]
How to Measure Safety’s ROI
Most companies are in business to make money. Of course, safety and profitability are perfectly compatible. But because it doesn’t generate revenue, safety tends to be seen as a cost-center absorbing resources that could be more profitably invested in initiatives more closely tied to revenue generation. Your success as a safety coordinator might very well turn on how well you dispel that notion. The good news is that research shows that CEOs and corporate decision makers are coming to appreciate that safety programs do — or at least have the potential to — generate positive return on investment (ROI). The [...]
Showing How Worker Fatigue Harms the Bottom Line
As safety coordinator, you need to be aware of the dangers of workplace fatigue and warn company management to consider the economic impact of driving workers too hard. But you’ll need solid evidence to support your argument. There are 2 studies published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM) you can use: One is on the relationship between fatigue and health-related lost productive time and the other links weekly work schedules of 60 or more hours to health and safety problems. Fatigue in the Workforce Workers suffering from fatigue—physical and mental—are not only less productive and more prone to illness [...]
