What would you imagine someone saying if they were told to perform a job hazard analysis? What about a risk assessment? Heaven forbid the company has to have someone come in for a safety audit! Hopefully there aren’t too many disagreeable groans when this news is relayed to employees. In fact, those three safety procedures…
Personal protection equipment, or PPE, is critical for keeping people safe in the workplace. There are many different types of PPE available, each of which is designed to provide a specific type of protection to the person wearing it. While some PPE items is designed to be used once and then disposed of, most of…
Visual communication is essential to occupational safety and this is especially true if the workplace is a notoriously hazardous mine. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) requires that mine operators follow safety guidelines to reduce the risks of safety hazards. Mines should also employ visual safety tools such as safety signs and labels to…
Visual communication is one of the most effective and widely understood forms of communication, and that is especially true in facilities and warehouses. There is a plethora of places and spaces in a workplace to add visual cues: the wall, the floor, shelves and racks, pipes, wires, machines, and virtually any surface. Why Go Visual?…
Shift work refers to any type of non-daytime work shift. Night workers, those who work very late or very early and workers who have a rotating work shift are all considered shift workers. According to the American Psychological Association, almost 15 million Americans work night shifts at least some of the time, which makes them…
Plummet, a new game for iPhones, requires players to navigate the path of a person who has just fallen down a deep construction hole. Users move the person by tilting their phones to the right or left and they try to accumulate as high a score as possible. So what does this have to do with…
Some occupational cancer-causing agents such as asbestos are well known and well documented. Asbestos fibers in the air can get into the lungs and cause cancer even decades later. Many other carcinogens are present in workplaces too, though, which don’t have household names. According to the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) in the…
Walking through the workplace may seem like a simple task that doesn’t require much attention. It’s often that type of thinking that leads to an environment where workers experience slips, trips and falls too frequently. According to OSHA, the majority of accidents in general industry are the result of slips, trips and falls, and these…
In many industrial and construction workplaces, contaminated clothing and personal protective equipment (PPE) are an everyday occurrence. Dust, dirt and more hazardous contaminants such as lead and asbestos can cover workers, making their protective gear or clothing dangerous. Too often, employees carry these contaminants home on their clothing, getting the materials into their cars and homes…
It’s becoming more and more common for companies to employ temporary workers from staffing agencies, especially at large worksites. Companies decide to use staffing agencies for many reasons, sometimes because doing so is cost-effective or helps cover periods of higher production. One of the problems with this rising phenomenon is that when workers at a jobsite…