This blog is not exactly geared toward the younger crowd. I understand it – this safety and health stuff is boring and not really all that cool, right? After all, we are the old-timers, the ones who are supposed to be overseeing the the younger generation and trying to give them the tools to be safe. Yet the challenge for us is that the younger generation thinks it will live forever and just can’t imagine needing to be safe. They are men and women of steel! They are athletic, fit, flexible and they know everything there is to know about the world, right?
Boy, wouldn’t we like to be back there again.
[Image courtesy of Elliott Brown from Flickr via a Creative Commons license]Scaffolding like this is important in construction work. But young people seem to be at risk of falling from places like this, leading to serious injury or death. Falls are the No. 1 cause of serious work-related injuries among young workers.
We already know this, but it’s time to face the truth with your young bucks – they think they are invincible, but they are not. However, because of the psychology of the younger generation that thinks nothing bad with happen, that is where most of the bad things happen. When a person thinks he or she is invincible and cannot be hurt, they tend to take very unnecessary risks when working or when playing (it’s usually the younger people who tend to skydive and base-jump and other things that I really don’t have the heart to do).
And it is important for us, who oversee safety in a workplace or directly supervise these younger wrkers, to do what we can to make sure these workers stay safe and do not take irresponsible risks while on the worksite. What they do off that cliff or out of a perfectly good airplane is their business as long as it’s not on company time. (Snark off.)
Maybe we can’t get through to these workers about all of our safety procedures, but maybe we can reach them by helping them understand the most common ways that younger workers get hurt, and how frequently. Try on these facts with these workers when you have a safety class of some kind (these come courtesy of this brochure from WorkSafeBC):
* 46 young workers – just in British Columbia! – are injured on the job every single day.
* 1 person dies from an on-the-job incident every eight weeks. Again, just in one Canadian province.
* The No. 1 cause of injuries on the job for young workers? Falling off high places or ladders.
* The No. 2 cause? Machinery – especially those in active operation.
Maybe the statistics won’t sober up these workers, and maybe not talking about what it costs the company to have these workers out of commission for a period of time due to an on-the-job incident. Maybe all it takes is for them to read the stories of Josh Dueck and Nick Perry, young workers who both suffered significant injuries on the job. They are included in the aforementioed brochure.
For us, what we can do is not be so much going into great exhaustive training over all of the safety protocols of the company, but perhaps focus on the two major causes of injuries, and encourage these workers to follow safety rules about ladders, highly raised areas and operation of machinery. Many of these young workers like the idea of being independent, but if you are firm with the training and do not let them work on their own until they can prove to you they know the safety rules and practice them on a regular basis while on the job, they will not get that independence and sense of freedom they so desperately crave.
Even if all you can do is drive home the safety on ladders and with machinery, you will already go a long way toward improving the numbers in terms of workplace injuries and incidents involving these “invincibles.”
They can be invincible – but not without some help and guidance from us. But don’t tell them that. They won’t believe you.