Getting Employees to Report Near Misses
Discipline is a double edge sword—necessary to enforce safety policies but also a potential chilling effect on the reporting of dangerous conditions. Near miss reporting is an excellent example of the negative impact discipline can play. Here’s the problem and a Best Practices solution for resolving it. Why You Need Employees to Report Near Misses In the course of conducting an injury investigation, nothing is more frustrating than to learn that the same circumstances that led to an injury resulted in prior incidents that went unreported by employees because accidents were narrowly missed and nobody got hurt. You hear: “That [...]
The Average Work Desk is Approximately 400 Times Dirtier Than the Average Toilet Seat
According to Dr. Charles Gerba of the University of Arizona, the average office worker has over 10 million bacteria living on its desk - that's 400x more than the average truck stop toilet seat. GROSS!!! It isn't just the gum stuck to the bottom, a study funded by Clorox Co found that the average desk has dangerously high levels of bacteria and viruses. Of course bacteria are not all bad, and common bacteria are found on every surface, but if COVID has taught us anything, it should be just how fragile our personal health, wellbeing, and the economy are when [...]
Your Sedentary Employees are Twice as Likely to Die of Heart Disease
We all know that a sedentary lifestyle is a risk factor for heart disease. The more you sit, the less you move, and the less you move, the more your risk increases. New research published in the journal Current Biology estimates that the average American does about 30 minutes less physical activity a day than an American in 1820. “Instead of walking to work, we take cars or trains; instead of manual labor in factories, we use machines." The study also found that resting metabolic rate — the total number of calories burned when the body is at rest — has [...]
What is Micro-Learning & Why It Works
“Microlearning is a way of teaching and delivering content to learners in small, very specific bursts. The learners are in control of what and when they’re learning.” - eLearning Industry The concept of delivering bite-size learning and following up with reinforcement activities has been around for a very long time. Micro-learning is a modern approach to delivering learning materials in small, bite-sized portions that target specific topics. The conciseness of these materials makes it easier to digest. Microlearning is performed in short time bursts. It requires little effort from individual sessions. It involves simple and/or narrow topics. Also, the industry [...]
8 Reasons Why Refresher Training Is a Good Idea
Refresher training helps keep important knowledge fresh and current. Whether your a student or a teacher, one thing we all know for personal experience is that knowledge fades over time. Our brains are very efficient at dumping information we don’t need, and the best way we have of showing our brain that that information is still useful is by using it. It’s a classic case of “use it or lose it.” What this means for learning is that most of us need a review of important concepts from time to time. And this is where refresher courses come into play. [...]
Supported Learning Resources in SafetyNow
The following section will show you how SafetyNow supports different methods of content delivery including self-learning and face-to-face training SELF-LEARNING The core platform for SafetyNow is self-learning. SafetyNow’s course platform allows participants to complete learning at any time of day or night using a PC, mobile or tablet. To complete a course, a worker must first watch a video and then pass an essential assessment. After that they can download a course certificate. In addition to the core topic, learners are able to take on optional extension assessment for extra credit. During the extension, learners are asked to reflect on [...]
Back Injuries and Prevention Safety Meeting Kit
WHAT’S AT STAKE The back is made up of bones, muscles, ligaments, vertebrae, disks, and connective tissue, and workplace back injuries can damage any of those. Though injuries can happen anywhere along the spinal column between the head and the tailbone, the majority of workplace back injuries involve the lower back. Perhaps the most common of these are disk problems, which result when one of the disks that act as a shock absorber between the vertebrae in our spinal column are suddenly compressed and ends up protruding out of its normal position. If this disk touches a spinal nerve it [...]
Wildfire Safety
Warm and dry conditions are making wildfires easier to start and more difficult to put out, a trend that can be clearly seen by last year's record-setting season in North America, which has already been eclipsed in 2021, with months left in the fire season. Given that this summer is already being characterized by a historic heatwave, extreme drought and record temperatures, 2021 is shaping up to be a particularly devastating wildfire season. Besides the millions of acres of forest losts, wildfires are consuming more and more of State and Provincial budgets (particularly in the west), and the economic impacts [...]
State of Safety Survey
Safety culture, or the way safety is perceived, valued and prioritized in any company, has obvious effects on accident rates, but it also impacts competitiveness, productivity, reliability, and employee morale. Companies with an effective safety culture know that by making safety an asset rather than a risk brings them positive economic results throughout their business. Of course, as a Safety Professional, you have an understanding of the effectiveness of your safety program – but do you have effective benchmarks against other companies? Do you KNOW what is working for others in your industry? What isn’t? Bongarde and the Work Safety [...]
Teamwork & Culture Safety Talk
WHAT’S AT STAKE Nearly everyone has heard sayings such as ‘Many hands make light work’ or ‘None of us is as smart as all of us.’ These sayings refer to teamwork. Many people associate teamwork with sales teams or sports teams, but teamwork is also a vital element in keeping you and your co-workers safe and healthy on the job. WHAT’S THE DANGER Have you met a ‘lone wolf’ in the workplace? This type of person sticks to himself, shuns contact with others and isn’t out to be friendly or popular with co-workers. The lone wolf doesn’t need or want [...]
Safety & Self Motivation
SafetyNow has been involved in safety compliance and training since 1929. In our early days we operated as a magazine and newsletter publisher for trade associations throughout North America; our public facing brand was The Safe Foreman. Periodically I take some time to thumb through our old articles and stories to see how OHS has changed, and how it hasn't. I always have to remind myself that the constant through the years is that we are always trying to influence human behavior, and that it's a game of inches and not yards. It's about iterative improvement... training, testing, auditing, correcting, [...]
COVID-19 Infections Rising Again
With COVID-19 infections rising again throughout Canada and the US, local and federal health authorities across both countries have been, relatively, consistent in their guidance, and taking queues from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: recommending that all persons living and working in areas with substantial or high community COVID-19 infection rates wear masks in indoor settings, regardless of vaccination status, and encouraging mask use in public by fully vaccinated people who are immunocompromised, at increased risk of severe disease from COVID-19, or live with someone who is immunocompromised or not fully vaccinated. that workers who are not [...]
