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September, 2005
Safety Professionals and Katrina Relief
By Lauryn Franzoni
Dear SafetyXChange Members:
Today’s story is a bit of a departure from what you’re used to seeing in these pages. But it’s a topic weighing heavily on my mind and I’m sure on yours as well. So I hope you’ll indulge me just this once. . .
Since the first days of [...]
Assessing Safety Programs Then and Now: Part 2 (Now)
By Gary A. Higbee
Last week, I described the advice I gave 20 years ago to help organizations assess the quality of their safety programs. Back then, I believed there were five stages that an organization passes through on its journey to attaining world class safety performance:
Realization
Traditional
Observation
Empowerment
Utopia
I still believe in the [...]
The Female Worker and the PPE Challenge
By Elizabeth Johnston
There are more than 18 million female workers in the U.S. and more than 1 million in Canada. That doesn’t include the women who own and operate their own businesses, seasonal workers or individual women who work only occasionally. Protective work wear is mandatory for many of these women. But as we discussed [...]
How to Develop a Lift Team, Part 2
By Kenneth S. Weinberg, MSc, PhD
In Part 1 of this series, I explained how using lift teams can help reduce ergonomic injuries in a healthcare facility. (The same is true in other kinds of facilities and many of the principles discussed in this story might apply outside the healthcare context.) But to get the [...]
Government Accountability in the U.S. and Canada
By Glenn S. Demby, Esq.
“To sustain a claim that the Government is liable for awards of monetary damages, the waiver of sovereign immunity must extend unambiguously to such claims.”
U.S. Supreme Court, Lane v. Secretary of Transportation, 518 U.S. 187 (1996).
“Public authorities with powers . . . under safety statutes have, in the past been [...]
Innovation, the Company and Career Success
By Lauryn Franzoni
Dear SafetyXChange Members:
Innovation may be the most critical factor in success – both for companies and individuals. What is innovation? The guru of business strategy, Peter Drucker, describes it as “the specific instrument of entrepreneurship, the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.”
The United States may be [...]
Assessing Safety Programs, Then and Now: Part 1 (Then)
By Gary A. Higbee
How “good” is your safety program? Twenty years ago, I set out to answer that question by identifying five stages an organization passes through on its way to world class safety performance. I’ve seen a lot in 20 years and I’ve since refined my answer. Here’s what I said back then. [...]
How to Develop a Lift Team, Part 1
By Kenneth S. Weinberg, MSc, PhD
Ever since OSHA introduced its Ergonomics Guidelines in 2001, safety professionals have worked hard to better understand the causes of musculoskeletal injuries (MSIs) and, more importantly, how to reduce or eliminate them. This is especially true in healthcare, where workers suffer more MSIs than any other professional group – with [...]
Better to Have No Safe Work Procedure Than One You Dont Follow
By Glenn S. Demby, Esq.
Analyzing the hazards associated with particular jobs and writing safe work procedures for performing those tasks can help prevent accidents. But simply having a procedure doesn’t help if the procedure isn’t followed. In fact, from a liability perspective, developing a procedure that isn’t implemented is a bigger risk than not having [...]
The Danger of Assumptions and the Informational Interview
By Lauryn Franzoni
It’s Back to School time for kids and Back to Job Searching time for at least some of you safety professionals out there. If you’re among the job seekers, here’s some advice: Beware of making assumptions.
Job seekers often make assumptions – false ones – about companies, positions and their potential for landing [...]