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A holiday message:
The often-overlooked
key to safety at home and work is motivation
By Fred D. Rine
Founder and CEO, FDRsafety
Many of the
basic rules for keeping safe at home and at work are common sense: wear your
seatbelt, don't reach too far to the side when up on a ladder, don't leave a
wet spot on the floor where someone might slip and fall.
As
common sense as these rules are, how often have you seen them violated? (It's
OK to take the Fifth here if you want.)
So as the holiday season approaches
and thoughts turn to the people we love, it seems appropriate to offer some
simple advice to help people stick to the basic rules at home and work so that
an accident won't get in the way of warm celebrations.
Time and comfort are two powerful
motivations to act unsafely. Time pressures, for example, make it tempting to
reach way over when on a ladder rather than getting down and moving it. And the
comfort factor of driving without a seatbelt can drown out strong messages
about the importance of buckling up.
So time and comfort need a
counterweight that will push decisions in the right direction. That
counterweight is the motivation to act safely.
The home and the workplace are, of
course, different in many ways. But when it comes to the motivation to act
safely, they have much in common. An accident at home can be no less
devastating than one at work.
FDRsafety has provided safety
awareness training to more than 400,000 people in a range of industries and we
have found that, pre-training, safety is often viewed as a "have-to" activity
rather than a "want-to." Workers
frequently arrive at safety training sessions with a sense of dread that they
will have to listen to a droning instructor for hours on end and deal with a
stack of documents.
But our goal at the sessions is
simply to change the "have-to" mentality. We provide not a single handout.
Instead we look at why workers are
on the job in the first place. The answer, of course, is to provide for
themselves and their families.
Then we discuss the consequences of
not returning home safely. When I ask what would happen to a worker's family if
he or she died on the job, the room gets focused pretty quickly. Workers then
understand why they should obey the rules, not from a textbook perspective, but
from a gut, personal level. They understand that safety is one of the most
unforgiving things there is. One error and you're out of here. And your family
lives on with the devastation.
That is as true for an accident that
occurs at home as one that happens at work.
At a safety awareness program I
conducted for a group of truck drivers in Detroit, I started by asking everyone
to introduce themselves, as I always do. Red flags started waving in my mind
when one veteran began talking. He said he had 35 years in as a driver and
would be retiring in five days.
"I don't want to be here," he said.
"After 35 years on the road, I don't need safety training."
I began worrying that he would cast
a pall over the session with non-stop nay-saying.
So imagine my surprise when he
approached me at the end of the session, complimented me on the training and
told me he planned a major change in his behavior.
He said he had never worn a seat
belt in his 35 years on the road. But he said he now realized why it was
important. He planned to wear one in his remaining few days so that he would
actually make it to retirement.
At this holiday season, when
thoughts turn strongly to family, let us also think about acting safely at home
and at work - not for the sake of rules, but for the sake of the ones we love.
Fred Rine spent 18 years running
safety programs at Roadway Express and FedEx before founding FDRsafety.
FDRsafety provides safety awareness training for all segments of industry.
Contact Fred at frine@fdrsafety.com or 1-888-755-8010.
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FDRsafety can meet your needs on
Industrial Hygiene
Some of our
customers may not be aware that we can meet their needs for Industrial Hygiene
services as well as Occupational Safety.
FDRsafety
provides Industrial Hygiene services for the construction and general industry.
Our team members are experienced in Industrial Hygiene and are extremely
knowledgeable about relevant regulations
as well as current trends and issues.
Among our
services:
- Noise
measurement
- Hazardous
chemical exposure assessment
- Indoor
air quality monitoring
- Heat
stress assessment
- Combustible
dust assessment
For more
information, contact Ross Smith at 1-888-755-8010 or rsmith@fdrsafety.com.
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FDRsafety
278 Franklin Road
Brentwood, Tennessee 37027888-755-8010
info@FDRsafety.com
ABOUT FDRsafetyAt the heart of FDRsafety is this simple idea: Extensive expertise and experience bring the best results. FDRsafety is led by two nationally recognized, long-time leaders in safety: Fred Rine and Jim Stanley. Each has decades of experience improving occupational safety and health performance at companies of all sizes, including complex multi-billion dollar, multinational organizations. FDRsafety can meet your needs for a wide range of safety and health services, including training, OSHA compliance, safety staffing and expert witnesses. Contact us to learn how we can help you reduce accidents, meet federal, state and local legal requirements, reduce costs, and most importantly, protect your greatest assets - your employees.
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