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Recognize Employees for Safety-Related Accomplishments

Emedco's Safety Information Department — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 16:43:42 +0000

As 2010 winds down – it’s amazing it went by so fast- it might be a good time to start thinking about ways to recognize employees for their safety-related achievements over the past year. Recognition doesn’t have to include parties and expensive rewards. Instead, think about ways to thoughtfully show employees that safety is important and their efforts are appreciated.

Looking for ideas? Well I just so happen to have a few.

Certification Wallet Cards & Hard Hat Labels: Recognize employees for specific safety achievements, such as completing forklift safety training or being accident free for a certain number of years. You can also give them to employees for simply contributing to keeping the workplace safe all year. Employees can wear the hard hat labels or put the wallet cards with their badges as a sense of pride for their achievements.
Recognition Pins with Certificates: Give employees specialized pins related to some aspect of safety. Pair it with a personalized certificate to enhance the importance of the award.
Personalized Safety Signs: A fun and interesting way to recognize an employee may be to order a customized safety sign. Lots of companies allow you to customize safety signs. Why not put their name on one with a special message and recognize them that way? It will stand out and make the employee feel appreciated.
Safety Team Membership: If your facility has a safety team, consider making your top safety performer a member of that team for the following year. Not only will they feel pride for their achievements, but you’ll benefit from having a new member to add a different perspective to the team and serve as a connection to those working in your facility day to day.

If you have any interesting or unique ways you recognize employees for safety-related accomplishments, I’d love to hear them. Sharing best practices and ideas is one of the best ways to we can ensure employees work safely and actively participate in our safety programs.

Posted by got2 love safety

Think Ahead. Plan. Be Ready.

Emedco's Safety Information Department — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:23:22 +0000

Are you ready for an emergency? September is National Preparedness Month – a month designed to encourage Americans to take simple steps to prepare for emergencies in their homes, businesses and communities. Sponsored by the Ready Campaign in partnership with Citizen Corps and the Ad Council, National Preparedness Month is a great opportunity for you to take a look at your business’ emergency and evacuation plans, safety practices and facility security to ensure you are prepared.

Think Ahead
The first step is thinking ahead. How would you evacuate people from your facility? Do employees know how to respond to workplace accidents and incidents? Can emergency vehicles easily access your facility? If you answered no to any of these questions, you should think about ways to prepare for that type of incident. To do that, you’ll need a plan.

Plan
Planning is critical in preparing for an emergency. Planning involves things like developing an evacuation plan for your facility and clearly marking evacuation routes and meeting points. It also involves thinking about emergency vehicles and personnel. Can they easily access your facility and do their jobs quickly and efficiently when responding to an incident? You should also identify treatment locations where individuals can receive first aid in the event of an accident or injury. Finally, you should think about the systems you have in place for identifying and monitoring who is in your facility and where they are in case of an emergency.

Be Ready
Once you have a plan to deal with various emergencies or incidents, you should think about how you want to communicate those policies and practices to employees, visitors and others present in or around your facility. Consider using signs, such as exit signs and evacuation assembly area signs, to direct people out of your facility if an evacuation is needed. Also, think about signs needed outside of your facility to ensure emergency vehicles can get in and get out as necessary.

Traffic control devices can also be a useful tool to direct vehicle and pedestrian traffic and prevent accidents and injuries. Barricades, cones, tapes and other items are a great way to mark off pathways and safe areas throughout your facility.

First Aid items, such as kits, eyewash stations, bandages and medicinals should be stocked in your facility to allow for quick efficient treatment of injuries and wounds. Kits should be placed throughout your building to allow for easy access no matter where an incident may occur.

Regardless of how or when an emergency occurs, it’s important that you are ready. By thinking ahead and planning you are increasing your chances of avoiding accidents and keeping employees and visitors safe.

Online or classroom-style safety training?

Emedco's Safety Information Department — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:24:42 +0000

With computers basically taking over the world, is there still room for classroom-style safety training? More and more companies are moving toward e-learning versions of training, for everything from employee on-boarding, to health and benefits, to safety. But, is that the best way?

Online training has a lot of benefits, including:

Trainees can take the course anytime, anywhere (flexibility)
Multiple learning styles can be addressed
Less intimidating for employees to interact (answer questions on screen and think about safety situations)
Easy to capture test scores (if applicable)
Cost-efficient for the company
Consistency in material covered
Less time employees are pulled off the job to receive training

While these seem like great reasons for a company to move to computer-based training, there are many reasons offered in support of classroom style training. Such as:

Employee interaction (group collaboration)
In-person question and answer
Hands-on training opportunities
Constructive team building
Allows more time to grasp concepts and lessons
Forces trainees to focus on the training, versus multitasking while taking part in an online session

In a recent article, author Louis Trahan wrote that “The fact of the matter is that many people simply learn better in a classroom setting. Some people thrive on the conversation of a topic with other people,” which is something you cannot necessarily get from online training.

Regardless of which method you choose for your safety training, think about your work environment and employees and based on that decide which method is best for your company.

Posted by got2 love safety

Purchasing safety products…catalogs? web sites? stores?

Emedco's Safety Information Department — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 20:02:39 +0000

It’s that time of year….catalog development season. Picking new products, removing old ones. Making the pages look nice and well organized. It’s quite an undertaking! So, with my brain swimming with hundreds of catalog pages I’m working on, I started to think about our catalogs and how customers use them to order safety products, versus going on the web or walking into a store.

In a catalog space is limited. So, companies (like mine) are forced to put the best of the best – the most popular and best selling products. Then we organize the pages, double and triple checking everything before it goes off to the printer. Reams of paper later…a beautiful catalog in your mailbox. You can easily flip through it and see all of the safety products a company has to offer, pull out pages, save pages or share the book with others in your facility or office. It’s a useful tool for lots of people, especially in places where the web might not be readily available – like plant floors and outdoor work sites.

Then, you have the web. Space on the web is endless. A company can post as many products as they want on the site. They can be easily modified and updated too. Products are easily searchable, readily available and can be ordered any time of day with the click of a few buttons.

What about the store? In a store, people can walk in to browse and choose a product. Being able to touch and see the product is a benefit that the web and catalogs cannot provide.

So which is better? For me, I’m extremely comfortable with using the web to shop for everything and anything. But, I know plenty of people that would rather have a catalog or booklet in hand to flip through and shop from. Others prefer to go to a store and physically browse products to find what they are looking for.

So as I sit in a mountain of catalog pages, I ask you…which way do you prefer to shop for safety products?

Bring National Safety Month into your facility

Emedco's Safety Information Department — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 17:16:19 +0000

In my last blog I wrote about National Safety Month – what it is and some thoughts on integrating outside-of-work safety topics into your workplace safety training sessions. This week I’ll continue my discussion on National Safety Month, but with a different focus – ways to “celebrate” National Safety Month in your facility.

I know that we’re half way through June already, but some of these ideas are easy to pull together. Others, you may need to wait until next year to do them, but you’ll be prepared and ready to go come June 2011.

I looked around on the Web for a bunch of fun and unique ways to celebrate safety. I’ve listed them below. Hopefully some of these ideas will be useful.

BBQ/Cookout: My company did this earlier this month and it was a nice “thank-you” type event
Safety Bingo or other games: Just give them a safety twist – my company sends a safety fact or information with the daily bingo number each day.
Safety Poster Competition: Have employees compete to create posters that either remind employees to work safely or outline proper safety actions.
Safety Quiz: Give employees an optional safety quiz. If employees turn it in with all answers correct give them some sort of prize.
Safety Workshops: Hold a workshop on a safety topic that is important or needs more focus in your facility.
Safe Employee Weekly Recognition: Each week in June have employees nominate an employee as the “Safety Employee of the Week” or something to that effect.
Safety Demonstrations: Hold weekly safety demonstrations or discussions
Safety Videos: Run safety videos in cafeterias or high-traffic areas
Safety Suggestion “Drive” : Run a safety suggestion scheme with suggestion boxes around the work areas & busy areas. Encourage employees to look for safety hazards in the facility and/or provides ideas for improving the facility’s safety

Now I know that some people are against providing incentives for employees to work safely, but in this case, I think it’s different. These types of celebratory activities are a great way to say thanks for working safely all year and perfect opportunity to put some extra emphasis on workplace safety. They do not have to be tied to accident reporting and the like

If your company is already doing things to celebrate National Safety Month, I’d love to hear about them.

Posted by got2 love safety

June is National Safety Month

Emedco's Safety Information Department — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 12:44:35 +0000

It’s National Safety Month! Not that safety isn’t always important, but during the month of June the National Safety Council (NSC), which sponsors the initiative, is putting in extra effort to remind people to live and work safely. It is also encouraging companies to spend some time this month focusing on safe practices in the workplace.

How are they doing that?

For each week in June, the NSC has identified a specific theme on which to focus. You can see the full list of weekly themes as well as posters, tip sheets and other materials you can use for your own safety events here.

Many of the topics chosen by the NSC for this year’s National Safety Month are not necessarily related to workplace safety. They are topics like teen driving, prescription overdose prevention, summer safety, etc.

I found this interesting, because in my area of expertise, I am primarily focused on safety in the workplace and ways to make safety training effective. But, this made me give more thought to the idea that there’s more to your employees’ safety than simply working safe.

So given the NSC’s focus areas, this month might be a good opportunity to integrate “outside-of-work” safety topics into your workplace safety training sessions – or hold a unique session that focuses on general “life” safety.

Encouraging your employees not only to be safe at work, but at home too, is great way to help ensure you have happy, healthy employees in the workplace each day. And honestly, I feel like it’s an overlooked part of safety training in most workplaces.

You can also check out Emedco’s National Safety Month calendar for interesting safety facts and special deals on safety products.

Posted by got2 love safety

Customize your safety training materials

Emedco's Safety Information Department — Tue, 25 May 2010 19:45:37 +0000

Every safety training program is different. A unique blend of techniques and tools are used depending on the safety needs of the workplace, the number of employees, the specific goal of the training program, etc.

Many materials used for safety training take on a one-size-fits-all format. But, if you are looking for a way to create a unique safety training program at your facility, why not try customizing your training, certification and safety reminder materials?

Customization allows you to add your logo, wording, colors, and more to make your materials more effective or create a sense of teamwork and company commitment.

Consider customizing products like:

Safety banners
Accident tracking scoreboards
Certification hard hat labels
Safety signs
Training and certification wallet cards
Safety reference guides
Motivational items

Posted by got2 love safety

Wall charts are a great safety training tool

Emedco's Safety Information Department — Tue, 11 May 2010 20:02:11 +0000

Excellent to use in group training sessions or to post around your facility, wall charts are effective and useful safety tools. Wall charts are sold in all sorts of sizes and materials, but a durable plastic wall chart is an economical choice in almost any application.

Consider using wall charts for the following workplace safety topics:

CPR: how do you perform it and what are the proper procedures
Confined Space Safety: steps you can take to ensure you are safe when working in confined spaces
Choking: what to do in a choking emergency
MSDS: information to help employees understand information on an MSDS sheet
Chemical Labels: explain what the designations on chemical labels mean and what safety precautions should be taken depending on the hazard level. Can also use a version that shows ratings for all chemicals.
Fire Evacuation: procedures to follow if a fire emergency were to occur. You can also post your evacuation plan with this wall chart.
Lock-Out, Tag-Out Safety: lock-out procedures and/or an explanation of various lock-out devices
Machine Hazards: Identify potential machine hazards in the workplace
Ergonomics: Show proper form for bending, lifting, etc. as well as stretches that can be used to avoid injury.
Protective Wear: Explain proper usage of personal protective equipment
Forklift Safety: Alert fork lift operators and other employees of potential of necessary procedures and potential hazards
Fall Protection: Educate employees on how to avoid falls when working or using certain equipment

Posted by got2 love safety

What’s the best way to reduce workplace injuries?

Emedco's Safety Information Department — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 20:10:42 +0000

We all agree that reducing workplace injuries and keeping employees safe is important. But there are different schools of thought on how exactly to achieve that. On one hand, some feel that more regulations and stricter fines are the most effective way to ensure employees are protected. On the other, some think that creating a workplace committed to safety is the more effective.

Those who support the idea of stricter fines and more regulations will be happy to know that in the near future OSHA will be introducing a new program to help protect workers in all types of jobs. The program is called the Severe Violator Enforcement Program.

This program is designed to concentrate OSHA’s effort more specifically on the repeat offenders – companies that are obstinate and show a lack of concern for safety laws and regulations. The program will increase the number of OSHA inspections at those companies as well as increase fines for repeat offenders. Hopefully this program pushes companies to comply with safety regulations out of fear of harsher fines and penalties.

In a recent news release announcing the program OSHA stated that: “For many employers, investing in job safety happens only when they have adequate incentives to comply with OSHA’s requirements. Higher penalties and more aggressive, targeted enforcement will provide a greater deterrent and further encourage these employers to furnish safe and healthy workplaces for their employees.”

This reasoning supports the idea that greater fines and penalties are the way to reduce workplace accidents and injuries.

So, okay. That makes sense. But is there more we need to do? Fines and penalties may serve as motivation to ensure workers are safe, but that is reactionary rather than proactive. We can’t sit back and assume that inspections and fines are going to fix everything.

This is where the other side of the debate comes into play. Making employees committed to safety is an important part of maintaining an injury free workplace. If employees take ownership of the safety program and feel that they play an integral part in developing and maintaining that program, then they are more likely to follow all safety regulations. It may even cause employees to start suggesting safety improvements that they feel are important.

Overall, I don’t feel that either approach will solve the workplace injury issue. I think a combination of fines and regulations paired with a stronger sense of ownership for safety in one’s workplace will help reduce the number of workplace injuries and accidents.

What do you think?

Posted by got2 love safety

Humor? Gore? What makes a safety training video effective?

Emedco's Safety Information Department — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:14:51 +0000

When you think of a safety training video what are the first thoughts that come to mind? Based on my safety training experiences I think of out-dated, poor quality video. I think of corny, over-scripted dialogue between supervisors and employees. Mostly, I remember the video being extremely boring and drawn out.

Obviously videos like this are not going to be the most effective in training your employees to work safe. To make safety videos more effective, some companies have tried using humor, gore or other tactics to make employees pay attention.

For example, take a look at some of the videos I have linked to below:

Are these videos more effective? And which is more effective?

A humorous video may grab an employee’s attention so they actively watch the full video, but just because they watch the entire video doesn’t mean he/she grasped all of the important safety messages. Also, using humor may cause an employee not to take safety seriously.

On the other hand a gory video may be an overly graphic depiction of safety hazards. Some employees may watch it the whole way through, but others may be disgusted and ignore parts of the video. Gore definitely stresses the severity of not working safely, but if done poorly can make the video seem like a joke.

What’s the best combination? I think the following elements are important:

Realistic scenarios – employees need to be able to relate to the situations
Relevant dialogue – the dialogue between characters or the narration should be easy to understand and contain important information on how follow legal regulations and avoid accidents
Short length – videos should be short and to the point. Consider purchasing videos that are cut into segments so workers can watch the ones relevant to their job.
Video recap – I think it’s helpful to have a recap of the key points at the end of the video so it’s the last thing the worker hears and hopefully remembers.

What elements do you think are important in safety videos?

For more information on this topic, see a related article I found on Safety News Alert.

Posted by got2 love safety