Hello, and Happy New Year. We took a bit of a sabbatical for the holidays, but we are back and ready to go for a dynamic 2018, after a full year of significant change in the political winds - and in the workplace-safety arena - in both the U.S. and Canada. This year, I've decided [...]
Have you done an analysis of the hazards in your worksite and cross-referenced those hazards with related workers-compensation losses ove the last couple of years? If not, if you had 100 percent of safety resources available to you, and you note that 5 percent of the hazards are high-risk, and 95 percent of them are [...]
yes, we're dividing your workplace into four possible safety quadrants. Hopefully your workplace actually only is in one of these, or is working toward it. Vladimir Ivensky wrote a piece in Professiona Safety magazine about safety, and how perception can often mean everything in terms of hazards and risks in a workplace. I've written a series [...]
Do the math. That is one of the familiar expressions we all hear. It's all about connecting the dots and coming to a natural, logical conclusion. Do the math. Having a logical conclusion to safety is a challenge, but Vladimir Ivensky tried to make it simple in his recent Professional Safety magazine article about determining the [...]
There are times when it is right to stand o principles and not give in. There are times when compromise is the prudent way, and it is useful to stay true to your values without compromising away those principles that you hold so firmly. But there is acquiescence. And there is the U.S. Congress, but [...]
Sometimes we lose sight of the truth, or the relative subjectivity of truth. There are facts, there is the truth, and there is how we each look at those that determines our existence. And oftr, our perspectives and biases wil presnnt to us a "different" version of the truth. In safety, multiple perspectives can be [...]
There is a saying in counterterrorism: Terrorists only have to be right once; we have to be right every time. That similar sentiment can be expressed for those who are in the business of assessing risk at a workplace. IN other words, hazards only have to impact a worker once, while safety officers have to [...]
Checklists can be important, both in everyday life and at work. Checklists are great at getting us organized, and are good for keeping us on the right track when we are going through a process that takes several steps due to its complexity or time. (Imagine how important that checklist is when you are buying [...]
Now that we have established that there are tools in place and available that could prevent many of the unfortunate incidents that result in injuries or death with tanker trucks, maybe we can finally get through to everyone who has not used a fill gauges on their tankers and convince them that doing so would [...]
Lately we've been spending some blog space working on the very preventable workplace hazard of workers and drivers around tanker trucks that we see on the roads all the time, carrying oil, natural gas, fertilizer, and other materials that have hazardous or dangerous risks to them. Tanker truck incidents are relatively rare compared to may [...]
