As if the workload, deadlines and other sources of day-to-day stress weren't enough, safety professionals are facing a new challenge: getting through the e-mail in their inboxes. Here are some hints to help you cope with the sheer mass and velocity of e-mail.

You Got Mail: Lots & Lots of Mail

Self-management is largely about focus and prioritization. E-mail makes these goals hard to accomplish. Many of us expend a disproportionate amount of our time and energy reading and responding to e-mail. New e-mail in our inbox seems to command immediate attention and thus distracts us from long term, worthier tasks.

Although it's a problem for just about all people, the e-mail distraction is especially tough on safety professionals. Our days are filled with crises of the moment, a laundry list of things to do, phone calls, personnel issues and many other things. The one to three hours per day that I bet the average safety professional spends sending, receiving, reading and writing e-mail puts us behind the eight ball and eliminates any sense of flexibility that we may possess.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that much of if not the majority of the more than 60 billion e-mails sent every year is unnecessary or at least less important than our work objectives.

Getting the E-Mail Problem under Control

Here are a few simple rules that we can implement within our departments or organizations to get e-mail under control:

Some of the best methods I have found for handling e-mail overload are:

Conclusion

While e-mail is critical to many aspects of our business, it can overwhelm us if we don't keep it under control. Be conscious of how effectively you're using e-mail. At the end of each day, determine what e-mail activity was time well spent and what activity was time wasted. Seek out patterns and make adjustments to your sending, reading and responding practices to maximize efficiency. This should help you liberate yourself from e-mail servitude and focus your energies on the vital task of protecting your employees.

BY THE NUMBERS
Recreational Boating Safety

By Glenn Demby

84% of those who drowned in recreational boating accidents would still be alive if they had been wearing PFDs

If your Labor Day plans include boating, here are some figures to be aware of:

714 The average number of recreational boaters who die each year

508 The average number of annual recreational boating deaths that are the result of drowning

51 The percentage of drowning victims who were in open motorboats (71% were in boats less than 21 feet in length)

84 The percentage of drowning victims who would still be alive today if they had been wearing a personal flotation device (PFD)

3 The number of states that don't currently have laws requiring children to wear PFDs: IA, VA and WI

14 The number of states that haven't adopted mandatory boating education safety requirements: AK, AZ, CA, HI, ID, IN, ME, MA, MN, MT, NC, SC, UT and WY

HISTORIC MOMENTS IN WORKPLACE SAFETY
The Origins of Labor Day

By Glenn Demby

President Grover Cleveland: Signed 1894 law making Labor Day a national holiday

My colleague, Catherine Jones, insists that Canada invented Labor Day - or Labour Day, as she and her compatriots call it. In fact, it was the international labor movement that advocated the creation of a day to celebrate the economic and social achievements of workers.

But Canadians did play a leading role in getting the holiday adopted. In 1872, Toronto printers went on strike for a 54-hour (!) work week. When the union leaders were jailed, 10,000 workers marched in protest. Eventually, the government released the union leaders and revoked the anti-union laws. Some mark the subsequent parades held in celebration as the first Labour Day. However, the Canadian government didn't adopt Labour Day as an official holiday until 1894.

The first Labor Day in the U.S. was celebrated in New York City in 1882. In 1887, five states officially adopted the holiday: Oregon, Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. It would take another seven years for the federal government to recognize Labor Day as a national holiday. As in Canada, impetus was supplied by an incident of labor unrest - the Pullman strike of 1893-94.

Today, Labor/Labour Day is celebrated throughout the world. In most countries, the holiday occurs on May 1, the international day of the worker. Canada and the U.S. celebrate the holiday on the first Monday of each September.

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