How Sharing Across Industries (Including Competitors) Can Accelerate Innovation
Safety Culture Enters the Office
Safety has long been the focus of the industrial world. We can’t even imagine opening a factory without it. Now, the pandemic has necessitated that offices become much more focused on developing a similar safety culture. This is a huge shift because at best, the most pressing physical issue for knowledge workers has been ergonomics. Now, leaders and employees are asking questions about how they can return to the office safely while clearly, quickly maintaining lines of communication.
Social distancing guidelines make it a requirement for businesses to understand how their buildings are being used, how people move through the space, and how building systems keep them comfortable and healthy. This requires tools that can aggregate business, building and security data to drive decision making and communications. A few more examples:
What Can We Do During The First 100-Days Of Aviation Club Operations?
Safety culture: Again, if you don’t actively define your safety culture, one will emerge, and you may not like it. Now is the time to define and follow a method to ensure that club members stay proficient, and not just current. A culture of safety is essential for any pilot, but particulary for a club, where positive mentoring is such a powerful positive tool, yet where complacency and poor examples, especially from members who are perceived, rightly or not, as “a good stick”, can have an equally powerful negative impact.
We’ve done a lot of work this year on the notion of a club’s safety culture and we recently introduced WINGS for Clubs. The FAA Safety Team (FAASTeam) WINGS program is exactly what clubs need. Many of us use the faasafety.gov website as a source of courses, quizzes, seminars and webinars, where members can stay proficient in aviation knowledge, but WINGS is so much more than that. You can earn a “phase” of WINGS by completing within 12-months, three knowledge tasks and three flight tasks, with a CFI. These tasks are well documented with background material and worksheets designed to conform to the ACS—Airmen Certification Standards. Compare this with the “currency” requirements of a Flight Review. Instead of the predictable minimum 1-hour of ground and 1-hour of flight time every 24-calencar months, competing a phase of WINGS gets you flying with a CFI three times a year, so you go beyond currency and strive for proficiency. Oh, by the way, completing a phase of WINGS also qualifies as a flight review.
Reps. DeFazio, Larsen release Boeing 737 MAX report
A report from the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure has found that serious flaws in design, management, and oversight of the Boeing 737 MAX led to two deadly crashes that killed 346 people.
U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), chair of the committee, and Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA), chair of the subcommittee on Aviation, released the report Wednesday.
The 238-page report found repeated and serious failures by both The Boeing Company and the Federal Aviation Administration. The report identified five central themes and more than six dozen investigative findings.
“Our report lays out disturbing revelations about how Boeing—under pressure to compete with Airbus and deliver profits for Wall Street—escaped scrutiny from the FAA, withheld critical information from pilots, and ultimately put planes into service that killed 346 innocent people. What’s particularly infuriating is how Boeing and FAA both gambled with public safety in the critical time period between the two crashes,” DeFazio said. “On behalf of the families of the victims of both crashes, as well as anyone who steps on a plane expecting to arrive at their destination safely, we are making this report public to put a spotlight not only on the broken safety culture at Boeing but also the gaps in the regulatory system at the FAA that allowed this fatally-flawed plane into service. Critically, our report gives Congress a roadmap on the steps we must take to reinforce aviation safety and regulatory transparency, increase Federal oversight, and improve corporate accountability to help ensure the story of the Boeing 737 MAX is never, ever repeated.”
The themes included: production pressures that jeopardized the safety of the flying public; faulty design and performance assumptions; a culture of concealment; conflicted representation, and Boeing’s influence of the FAA’s Oversight structure.
“The Committee’s thorough investigation uncovered errors that are difficult to hear, but necessary to confront about the 737 MAX certification,” Larsen said. “This report, combined with the findings and recommendations from the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines investigations, National Transportation Safety Board, Joint Authorities Technical Review and other entities, serve as a roadmap for changes to the FAA certification process. The 346 victims of the two tragic crashes and their families, as well as the traveling public, rightfully expect Congress to act. As the Committee moves into the next phase of oversight, I will continue to work with Chair DeFazio and my colleagues to address the significant cultural and structural deficiencies identified in the report in order to improve safety.”
[Medics asked to develop patient safety culture] [capitalradio.co.ug/medics-as…)
Working in stressful environments has been cited as a factor that makes health workers prone to errors which might occasionally cause bodily harm to patients.
According to ministry of health permanent secretary Dr Diana Atwine, “health workers are grappling with unprecedented challenges including healthcare-associated infections, violence, stigma, psychological and emotional disturbances, illness, and death.”
While speaking at the event commemorating World Patient Safety Day 2020, held under the theme Health Worker Safety: A Priority for Patient Safety, Dr Atwine implored health facility managers to develop a patient safety culture in health facilities where the patient is treated as a partner and health workers are trained and empowered to reduce patient harm and the risk of errors.
Uber Expands Self-Driving Safety Report After NTSB Slams Culture
So far, 23 companies have made their self-driving safety assessments public, according to NHTSA, including Apple Inc., Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co., Lyft Inc., Mercedes-Benz AG, Toyota Motor Corp. and Waymo. Beuse, a former NHTSA associate administrator for vehicle safety research, said Uber is among a handful that have updated its voluntary disclosures.
The fatality occurred around 10 p.m. on March 18, 2018, when a 49-year-old woman was hit by a 2017 Volvo XC90 SUV operated autonomously by Uber, according to police in the Phoenix suburb. Authorities said the vehicle was in self-drive mode with a safety operator behind the wheel when the pedestrian, who was walking a bicycle outside of a crosswalk, was struck. She died at a local hospital.
The NTSB voted in 2019 that the probable cause of the crash was “the failure of the vehicle operator to monitor the environment and the operation of the automated driving system because she was visually distracted throughout her trip by her personal cellphone.”
The board also cited three shortcomings by Uber: the company’s inadequate safety risk assessment procedures; ineffective oversight of vehicle operators; and lack of adequate mechanisms to address complacency by operators as the cars drove themselves.
The Tempe crash roiled the debate about self-driving cars in Washington, where legislation was being considered to drastically increase the number of such cars auto manufacturers would have been able to put on public roads. Uber suspended all testing of self-driving cars for four months before resuming testing in Pittsburgh in July 2018. The company closed its driverless testing program in Arizona and let go almost 300 workers there in May 2018.
Consumer advocates have seized on the incident to urge tougher regulations of self-driving cars.
“It’s nice that Uber has decided this is the right time to update its so-called report, but a consumer-focused agency would have long ago mandated all driverless vehicle manufacturers regularly submit useful safety details regarding their public road tests,” said Jason Levine, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety.
NTSB members applauded Uber for cooperating with its nearly two-year-long investigation when it released its findings in late 2019, but also cited an “ineffective safety culture” that played a role in the 2018 crash.
TWU IN NEW CALL FOR CLEANAWAY CRASH PROBE REOPENING
The management revelations engulfing waste handling and transport firm Cleanaway have put a cloud over its safety culture.
Led by the Australian Financial Review, mainstream media reports focusing on CEO Vik Bansal have elicited an “independent investigation” and a stern public warning from the company’s board on any “unacceptable conduct and an acknowledgement of the “feedback” from Bansal.
The board says it has implemented a range of measures including executive leadership mentoring, enhanced reporting, and monitoring of the CEO’s conduct.
Despite a huge improvement in injury reduction, the conduct so far has reported led to a culture of fear that hindered bad news being passed up the management chain, experienced managers leaving, pressure on truck drivers to perform other duties when vehicles were awaiting maintenance and cost-cutting impinging on upgrades to its fleet of 4,000 waste vehicles and garbage trucks.
The issues have caught the attention of the Transport Workers’ Union (TWU), which reiterates its call for South Australia’s SafeWork SA to reopen its investigation on fatal crash on Adelaide’s South Easter Freeway.
Maritime Workers Back Ports Of Auckland Health And Safety Review
The Maritime Union is backing a health and safety review at Ports of Auckland.
The inquiry was announced on 14 September by Auckland Mayor Phil Goff after the death of a stevedore working as a lasher aboard a ship at the port on 30 August.
Maritime Union National Secretary Joe Fleetwood says the Union has repeatedly called for a review of safety practices at all ports in New Zealand.
He welcomed the announcement by the Mayor and the interest from the Minister of Transport Phil Twyford in the issue.
“It’s very sad another worker had to die before this much needed review of the industry was announced.”
Mr Fleetwood says the health and safety culture is a national issue at ports, not just at Auckland.
“When you combine long hours, night shifts and relentless pressure for productivity, then the result is workers being killed and injured on the job.”
Mr Fleetwood says the Union has always maintained that owners of ports have the responsibility to ensure the wellbeing of all port workers.
Ep.44 What do we mean when we talk about safety culture?
Topics:
How “safety culture” came about in the 1970’s. What Chernobyl has to do with safety culture. Safety culture vs. safety climate. What the paper studied and what it concluded. The factors that influence the definition of safety culture. Who studies and talks about safety culture the least. Types of studies done on safety culture. Practical takeaways.
Quotes:
“The argument is, really, that culture only matters, because it influences climate. And climate’s what we measure and what we try to change.”
“42% of the papers are by engineering authors. 30% of them are by psychology authors. 14% from the health sciences. 10% from the social sciences. 3% from business. Which I find remarkable, given that organizational culture comes out of social science of organizations.”
“…That’s remarkable that 30% of the papers weren’t empirical in any sense. They were just people talking about safety culture as if they knew about it or summarizing other people who had talked about it.”
Kerala Plane Crash: Safety Experts Demand Preliminary Probe Report Be Made Public
A Boeing 737 aircraft, carrying 191 passengers had skidded off a tabletop runway and fallen into a gorge more than a month ago on August 7 at Calicut International Airport. Twenty-one passengers, including the two pilots onboard, lost their lives.
The International Civil Aviation Organisation’s (ICAO) investigation norms mandates a preliminary probe report to be prepared and shared with it within 30 days of the date of the accident.
“Preliminary reports may be marked as confidential or remain public at the investigating state’s discretion,” the ICAO’s Annexure 13, which deals with accident investigation, says. Aviation experts want the report to be made public. They argue that transparency promotes safety culture and awareness of threats.
“Countries like Indonesia, Ethiopia and Pakistan have released preliminary reports to the public and the information contained in the report has generated tremendous public response and assured that a comprehensive final report will benefit all the stakeholders,” Amit Singh, an aviation expert and a pilot, said. Singh alleged that when he wrote to Aurobindo Handa, DG, Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), Handa refused to even acknowledge that whether the AAIB has submitted the report to ICAO or not.
Restaurants Welcome FDA’s New Era of Food Safety Blueprint
Full-service operators that have been following this issue are already aware that ensuring the safety of the food supply will focus on a digitalized supply chain. The new Blueprint is clear in outlining achievable goals to enhance traceability, improve predictive analytics, respond more rapidly to outbreaks, address new business models, reduce sources of contamination for food, and foster the development of stronger food safety cultures. Even some of the lessons of COVID-19 are instructive when it comes to ensuring the safety of the food supply.
There are four pillars of the FDA Blueprint all of which apply to FSRs. The first is Food Safety Culture. The vision is a direct digital connection between the consumer and the food they are served that will help establish a culture of food safety like never before. It includes the use of interoperable standards for globally unique identification and uniform baseline content to be physically and digitally tied to each food supply chain item because this addresses the needs of both full-service restaurant management and customers.
For full-service restaurants, COVID-19 was a pivotal point that illustrated that the industry could indeed adapt to new business models. This knowledge will drive Retail Food Safety Modernization, another pillar of the FDA Blueprint. Touchless retail experiences driven by the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to grow in importance. In fact, there is every indication that highly automated restaurants with self-service ordering, self-checkout, and delivery technology will be vital for success in the future.
Chemical Spillage as a Model for Accident Causation
Chemical spillage has been measured for undergraduate students undertaking a laboratory practical designed to help develop their chemical handling skills. There was a low correlation found between the amount of chemical spilled and the ability to accurately carry out the primary goal of the experiment, which was to measure the concentrations of samples of unknown dilution. There was also a low correlation between the amount spilled by individual students carrying out consecutive experiments, which is consistent with the proportion of spillage incidents due to personal factors (e.g., accident-prone individuals) being low. Quantitatively, only ≈6% of the spillages could be accounted for by factors relating to the individual, with a (95%) confidence interval of 0.2–23%. These observations therefore indicate that a blame culture should be avoided when dealing with chemical spillages, and also that a more effective focus for efforts to improve laboratory safety should be on organizational or workplace factors, through, for example, improving teaching methods for all students, rather than targeting specific individuals for retraining who may have had a noticeable chemical mishap. These observations also suggest that the volume of chemical spilled by a student should not be used as a measure for summative assessment, as it is a poor predictor of future spillage.
Today’s New Employee Safety Culture is Benefitting Hotel Workers, Guests in Big Ways
A new safety culture has emerged in hospitality that places employee protection at the core of operations. Prior to the global pandemic, hoteliers were already rolling out employee safety devices (ESDs) per legislative mandates and commitments to industry programs like the American Hotel & Lodging Assn.’s 5-Star Promise to better protect their people from sexual harassment situations and threats of violence. Today, as hotel employees put their lives on the line to welcome back guests, they are safer than ever before thanks to new policies, procedures, and technologies designed to limit staff/guest interaction, eradicate disease, and dispatch help in an instant.
What does this new employee safety culture look like today? It depends on each hotel company and the location of its properties. Through a new webcast series titled “New World, New Employee Safety Culture” I spoke with hoteliers to find out how their employee safety culture is taking shape. Here is what I learned…
Training and More Training
Ryan Doi, Corporate Director of Information Systems for Prince Resorts Hawaii, said the new employee safety culture at Prince Resorts is centered on training, and safety is not just defined by physical protection, but by providing financial assistance to workers as well.
Metro To Investigate Top Manager After Audit Describes ‘Toxic’ And Dangerous Culture
Metro will conduct an independent review of a senior WMATA rail employee following an audit report that called Metro’s Rail Operations Control Center a “toxic workplace” with a culture “antithetical to safety.”
The audit, conducted by the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission (WMSC), found that senior rail operations leadership “regularly directed controllers to ignore procedures and checklists” that concerned safety. In particular, it said that on multiple occasions, Senior Vice President for Rail Services Lisa Woodruff “violated or instructed controllers to violate safety procedures.”
The audit also said that Woodruff told employees not to talk to the auditors and pressured workers to “paint a rosy picture” of the control center during an internal review.
“We take these allegations seriously,” Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld wrote in a memo to staff on Thursday. “For this reason, WMATA’s General Counsel has directed an outside law firm to conduct an independent review of the personnel matter.”
Do you need a health and safety representative? Do you need a health and safety representative? Gary Wilcox from health and safety system Monit, used by hundreds of Australian bodyshops advises us.
Short answer, no. Best answer, yes.
Firstly, the role of a Health & Safety Rep (HSR) is not to fix health and safety problems, nor be an expert on WHS issues, however the benefits of having one is good for both the business and workers.
BENEFITS:
•Having a HSR is a clear statement to the authorities your organisation is committed to health and safety by engaging workers to have a responsible role in assisting the organisation to improve its safety culture.
•Their role is to represent workers’ WHS issues that often need to be actively communicated to the business.
•They can often provide an effective way of linking the business to the workforce when it comes to improving safety on the ground. This is particularly helpful in a larger organisation with diverse workers.
•They provide an additional set out of eyes on how effective the business’ health and safety is.
BEWARE
Using a third party, off the shelf health and safety system in your panel shop is not in itself a silver bullet to compliance. The real secret to these systems working effectively is to ensure your workers are proactive towards the business’s goal of improving productivity in a safe manner. In other words, a great health and safety system is no match for a poor safety culture.
Ep 43: How is leadership development experienced? Topics:
Defining leadership development. The idea of taking on the mantle of “leader”. The six different ways of understanding leadership. Developing leaders who further the goals of the organization. Stretching people’s views of leadership. Practical take-aways.
Quotes:
“…And in some sense, they’re almost like stages that leaders go through in their evolution of thinking about themselves like a leader.”
“People didn’t fall in a category. THe researchers were just trying to see how far they could stretch people’s views of what leadership [is] and where they stopped.”
“Unless you can have an aligned and good understanding of those things, the researchers suggest…there’s not much point in getting started with leadership development activities.”
Chulalongkorn University’s Center for Safety, Health and Environment
In its commitment to provide a healthy and safe working environment for the CU community, Chulalongkorn University’s Center for Safety, Health and Environment of Chulalongkorn University (SHECU), is determined to make Chula a zero-accident organization by 2021.
On 26 May 2020, SHECU released four announcements on the standard practices of managing occupational safety and health in a working environment, and guidelines on radiation safety, chemical safety, and biosafety and biosecurity.
Professor Tirayut Vilaivan, Director at SHECU, reveals that in the past the safety on campus was managed by individual faculties and departments, causing the measures to lack consistency in practice. By 2016, the University established the Center for Safety, Health and Environment of Chulalongkorn University to promote and drive health and safety policies on campus.
Following the Occupational Safety, Health, and Environment Act in 2011, the University established a work safety management system that complied accordingly to the provisions. The four announcements released set clear guidelines to standardize the safety practices across campus. The four announcements are:
Constant training can help prevent man overboard incidents
Man overboard (MOB) incidents are among the top causes of injuries and fatalities on inland towing vessels, and preventing such incidents requires constant training and vigilance by all employees, from boat crews to shoreside personnel.
That’s a conclusion of a security expert who explained how Marathon Petroleum is confronting the problem during a Sept. 1 safety webinar organized by the American Waterways Operators as part of its Virtual Summer of Safety series.
Man overboard “is your number one (risk) exposure,” said Eric Fetty, emerging response and security coordinator at Marathon’s Marine Division in Cattlesburg, Ky. “The numbers don’t lie — when you look at crew fatalities by accident type, over 50 percent of industry fatalities are due to falls in the water, so with an exposure like that you have to pay attention.”
In introducing the discussion, Brian Bailey, AWO’s director of safety and environmental stewardship, cited data collected in 2019 by the Coast Guard-AWO Safety Partnership that showed a doubling of crew fatalities from 2014-2016, with nearly half caused by falls overboard. Data from the Coast Guard and incident reports showed that 68% of MOB incidents occur at night 32% during the day, nearly 60% occur in the first half of the calendar year, indicating the influence of dangerous winter weather conditions, and the majority occur on the Lower Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.
Focus on MOB accidents began to ramp up at Marathon after a fatality in 2010. The company reviewed its safety culture and as a result, “a lot good things have come about,” Fetty said. With the help of a third-party consultant, Marathon created a program that includes training and refresher courses for everyone in the company with a special emphasis on teaching new deckhands measures to prevent and react to overboard falls.
New deckhands spend close to a month in the classroom, he said, and then continue riverside at a training pad that simulates the deck of a barge for hands-on exercises. With a diver in the water, man overboard drills are practiced using specialized equipment. The new hires also train on harbor boats before being sent out on a line boat for their first hitch.
How field officers influence safety culture
Nobody in a fire and EMS organization has more influence on its daily operations than does the first-line supervisor – the company or field officer.
So it only stands to reason that the field officer is the one position in the organization that has the most influence over the department’s safety culture. As the saying goes, “It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.”
Your department should provide field officers with the appropriate policy and procedures necessary for firefighters, EMTs and paramedics to do their jobs more safely, effectively and efficiently. That’s the strategic direction. The tactical direction, making it happen, falls squarely on the field officers’ shoulders.
A safety culture and PPE use rely on determination and leadership. (Photo/American Ambulance Association) A safety culture and PPE use rely on determination and leadership. (Photo/American Ambulance Association) And if you are that field officer, how are you doing in that role?
[Lubrizol fire: a vast epidemiological investigation launched Tuesday on more than 5,000 people] REALTOR® Safety Advocates Prepare Tools and Resources to Expand Awareness
“Criminal behavioral therapists are reporting a spike in crime due to the stress of COVID-19,” he says, adding that, particularly in this environment, all REALTORS® need to “be more aware.”
Legaz has four scenarios that he believes warrant REALTORS® always bringing a “buddy” to alleviate safety concerns:
– If the property is vacant – If there is poor cellphone coverage – If you have a gut feeling before a showing – If you haven’t closed a deal in a while
“There are certain things we (should) teach that will remove weakness, subservience and vulnerability, as these attract a predator,” he says. “If you haven’t closed a deal in a while, you may push through that sixth sense. If you bring a buddy in those four situations, I think it’s more doable.”
In 2019, Legaz took his concerns about REALTOR® safety and elevated it as a project while participating in the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) Leadership Academy. Because NAR believes in the importance of emphasizing safety, leadership adopted the idea, and last year, the inaugural REALTOR® Safety Advisory Committee began its work.
The committee is made up of one member from each state REALTOR® Association’s Leadership Team. Legaz serves as its chairman.
“We’re in the process of revamping the safety website and curriculum. We’re also creating a brokerage toolkit,” he says. “We believe the brokerage has the biggest impact on [REALTORS®’ ] behaviors, habits and attitudes. It’s at the brokerage level where we need to bring a change of behavior and a cultural change.”
The toolkit being considered by the committee would include a video series, with short safety features that can be shown in local meetings.
Building that cultural change could be as simple as taking five minutes in every sales meeting to show a safety video from the toolkit, or giving a REALTOR® kudos for a safety-related action, Legaz says.
“These are big goals, but we’re putting the road map out there,” he says. “We want the cultural and behavioral change to start asking ‘where did you get the lead from and is it a vacant property?‘”
Having a three-way agreement between NAR, the state associations and local associations strengthens the advisory committee’s efforts to shift the safety culture among REALTORS®, says Legaz. “If we practice it and teach it, the state and local associations can use it. It’s reinforcing each other,” he explains.
“I’ve had the opportunity to interview REALTOR® victims and many of them had that sixth sense and still pushed through, and then they were victimized,” says Legaz. “We really have to listen to that gut feeling.”
Lubrizol fire: a vast epidemiological investigation launched Tuesday on more than 5,000 people
Did the fire at the Lubrizol factory, on the night of September 25 to 26, 2019, have any impact on the health of the inhabitants of the Rouen conurbation? To determine this, Public Health France announced on Monday August 31 that a large epidemiological study will be launched on Tuesday “to describe the health and quality of life of the population” following the spectacular fire at the chemical plant.
Nearly 10,000 tonnes of chemicals had burned on the Lubrizol site and on that of its neighbor Normandie Logistique. A 22 km long cloud of black smoke had formed. For several weeks or even months after the accident, residents of the Rouen metropolitan area complained of odors emanating from the site but also of symptoms such as headaches or vomiting. In mid-August, the residents of the factory had thus noted an increase in bad odors and hydrocarbon-like fumes, reported France 3 Normandy.
This survey will be carried out among 5,200 inhabitants of Seine-Maritime selected at random, to analyze the “fire perception” by the population and “the impact on his health”, said the health agency, which had mentioned the launch of this study in early June.
“4,000 adults and 1,200 children” of 122 municipalities in this department will be invited to answer an online or telephone questionnaire, in order to collect “information on their perception of this industrial disaster and their exposure to the nuisances and pollution it generated, on the symptoms and health problems that may have been experienced during the accident and its consequences, as well as on their state of current health “. The study will also interview 1,000 adults and 250 children living in Le Havre and its surroundings, the “control zone”.
“The first results of the study will be available at the end of 2020-beginning of 2021”, adds Public Health France, specifying that “this survey is part of a set of epidemiological studies set up (…) to assess the overall impact on health, in the medium and long term, of this large-scale industrial accident”, baptized “Santé Post Incendie 76”.
In early June, the Senate commission of inquiry into the disaster published a report denouncing health monitoring “late and incomplete” and a lack of “risk culture in France”.
The plant partially restarted in mid-December. It was authorized in mid-July to significantly increase its activity by the Seine-Maritime prefecture, which considered that the reduction in the quantities stored and the security measures undertaken allowed “to limit the probability and consequences of a fire”.
Four residential construction sites shut down due to safety concerns
Four residential construction sites in North Canberra have been issued prohibition notices and 14 improvement notices by WorkSafe ACT for serious safety breaches.
The sites were shut down after inspectors identified concerns including fall from height risks due to non-compliant scaffolding; slip, trip and fall risks due to poor housekeeping; insecure fencing allowi ng unauthorised access to dangerous worksites; and no toilet facilities for workers.
Work Health and Safety Commissioner Jacqueline Agius said these types of safety breaches are far too common. Last week after 11 construction sites were shut down for safety issues.
“We are continually seeing the same types of safety issues at residential construction sites across the ACT,” she said.
“Basic health and safety requirements, like having proper scaffolding and fall protection, is not negotiable.
“We will continue working with industry to help improve the safety culture in residential construction, but we will also keep issuing notices to companies who blatantly disregard their legal obligations to maintain a safe workplace.”
Topics:
The two ways to improve safety. Why this is a reasonable model for studying the influence of safety. The theory of planned behavior. What you should never claim in your study. The reality of survey research. What mediators are and how they function. Takeaways from the study.
Quotes:
“They were lamenting in their systematic review that lots of attempts to intervene in behavior change weren’t based on theories.”
“So, what they’re really saying is, ‘ok, we know these might be different types of behaviors, but is it sufficient to lump them all together?’ And statistically, yes it is.”
“When we say that something ‘mediates’, we’re basically saying it’s like a multiplier in the middle.”
Sharing great news on plastics worker safety We recently reported one of the most positive stories I can remember in our 31-year history: The U.S. plastics industry is becoming a safer place to work.
Steve Toloken crunched the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data and discovered that injury and illness rates in plastics processing plants have dropped about 20 percent in the last decade. The rate in 2018 fell to a record low of 3.8 cases per 100 full-time equivalent workers. Just 10 years ago, the rate was 5.1 per 100 workers.
Some of the credit goes to improving safety in all manufacturing plants. According to the National Safety Council, the injury rate for manufacturing across the board has fallen from 4.3 to 3.4 between 2009-18. NSC credits workers’ compensation laws, government oversight through agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, safety training and attempts to promote safety culture in organizations.
Drilling down more specifically into plastics, it’s also possible that strategies that identify and address “near misses” are helping to improve safety, according to the Plastics Industry Association in Washington.
There is one significant caveat: According to the BLS data, smaller plastics factories remain much more dangerous places to work than larger facilities.
Employees at plastics plants with between 50 and 249 workers were nearly twice as likely to be injured on the job, according to the government data.
That’s proof that, with more professional attention and more resources to invest in automation and technology, there’s still room for smaller firms to improve.
Safety must be every company’s top priority. It is encouraging to see progress. Let’s stay vigilant and continue to improve.
Celebrating what goes RIGHT in chemistry-lab safety www.unr.edu/nevada-to…
Recognizing it is typical in the world of chemistry-lab safety to point out what people are doing wrong, employees in Environmental Health & Safety set out to create a program to highlight what’s going right. Their Safest Teaching Assistant Awards program launched in 2017 and has sparked the interest of other universities as an example program. In summer 2020 the program was nationally recognized by a leading safety organization.
The Campus Safety, Health, and Environmental Management Association awarded the University of Nevada, Reno program first place in the category of Innovation-Safety Culture. The award was announced at CSHEMA’s 2020 conference, held online for this year.
The EH&S program selects and recognizes teaching assistants responsible for managing safety in the general chemistry, analytical chemistry, organic chemistry and introductory organic chemistry labs within the College of Science. Nearly 30 awards have been presented to teaching assistants since the program started.
Someone holding a handful of safety buttons
When the EH&S representatives show up to present a congratulatory certificate, they also provide all of the students in the lab a “science rocks” pin. EH&S Training Manager Brock A. Young notes the teaching assistants set the tone and teach safety practices, but the students make safety happen through their actions.
The acknowledgment of students recognizes the connection of laboratory safety to the overall culture of campus safety and to workforce development. As University President Marc Johnson said, “When you teach safety as an everyday practice, our graduates spread this culture where ever they go.”
Safety-First Culture: The Changing Definition of Safety in the Food Supply Chain
“Disruption” is more than an occasional buzzword in the food supply chain. Recent, rapid changes in our global economy have challenged organizations in the food industry to respond quickly to preserve a safe food supply. However, the food supply chain is uniquely positioned to capitalize on these challenges. Disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent Salmonella contamination of onions present unique opportunities to improve our collective safety culture. Many organizations within the food supply chain are stepping up to the plate with big ideas and technologies that reinforce new paradigm shifts in safety.
In response to the pandemic, a new revolutionary movement within the food supply chain has surfaced: rethinking safety compliance not as an outlier or threshold to overcome but as a primary tenet in company culture. Defining and establishing a safety-first culture is an inevitable and necessary step in the evolution of our global food supply chain, and the pandemic is an unexpected catalyst.
Safety compliance can be defined in many different ways. For our purposes, it’s the way safety is managed in a workplace, including the safety of the product, the customer, assets, employees, and the environment. The hallmark of a safety-first culture is when employees throughout the entire organization think of safety as a critical component of their day-to-day routine, a new standard in which safety involves everyone.
Safety-first culture is not an overnight process nor is it achieved by placing informational posters on the break room wall. It starts at the top and permeates throughout the organization until it is a part of the company culture as a whole. Instead of fading into the background as the latest in a series of obtrusive initiatives, safety-first culture is a total and permanent transformation in mindset. Most importantly, safety-first culture is impossible to achieve without first collecting timely, accurate data.