"I don't know what happened. I've been doing this job for 20 years and I've never gotten hurt."

If I had a dollar for every time an injured employee told me that, I'd be a rich man. The truth is, we almost always get hurt because of something that doesn't happen very often. Things don't break very often. Cars don't lose their brakes very often. Other people don't drop heavy things on us very often. But they do occasionally.

Safety Theories

Traditional safety programs try to eliminate, or at least drastically reduce, the potential for injury through a combination of training, engineering controls and administrative measures.

Behavior-based safety takes matters a step further by observing workers and telling them when they're doing things wrong or right. Over time, the theory goes, people will develop "habit strength", for example, by buckling their seat belt without thinking about it any time they get into a car.

Where Things Go Wrong

These techniques are all well and good as long as we don't introduce any other factors, like being tired, frustrated or in a hurry. But all bets are off when these factors enter the picture.

A person who's normally a safe driver becomes a different person once he sleeps through the alarm and gets to running late for work. Suddenly the good habits disappear and get replaced by tailgating, cursing and speeding. It's when people get into such states that accidents are most likely to happen.

The same thing happens in the workplace. When you introduce rushing into the work environment, say because the machine is down and you haven't been able to make parts all morning and the customers are waiting, we begin to work outside of traditional or behavior-based safety program guidance. Good habits and training go out the window and risky behavior takes over.

Advanced Safety Awareness

Rushing, fatigue, frustration, complacency, anger, etc. All of these emotions and states can contribute to the making of critical mistakes. Advanced safety awareness recognizes this and addresses the problem.

Wouldn't it be better if we could learn to trigger on the state? For instance, once we recognize that we're rushing or getting frustrated, we would step back, take a deep breath and say to ourselves, "Hey, if I keep this up, I'm going to hurt myself." This is what advanced safety awareness is all about. We'll take a look at that next week.

THE ART OF SAFETY

5 Jokes to Enliven Your Safety Presentations

By Art Fettig

Veteran safety consultant Art Fettig believes in using jokes to spice up safety meetings. Here are five of his favorites. Warning: Art says you shouldn't use a joke in your safety meeting unless you've practiced it and have nailed down the delivery.

1. Safe Driving

A guy gets pulled over by a traffic cop.
Traffic Cop: Did you know that your wife fell out of your car two blocks back?

Driver: What a relief! I thought I was going deaf!

2. Safe Driving, Part 2

Irate driver: "Why didn't you look out for me? You're the third person I've hit today!"

3. Road Rage

One car hits the other. The driver of the first car yells out "What's a matter, are you blind?"
"Blind?!,"answers the other, "What d'ya mean? I hit you didn't I?"

4. Machine Safety

Hey, did you hear that Charley got run over by a steamroller? If you want to visit him he's in the hospital in Rooms 15 to 22.

5. The Truth About OSHA Inspections

Who are the two biggest liars in the world?
The second biggest liar: The OSHA inspector who shows up at your facility and says "I'm here to help."
The biggest liar: The manager who smiles and says "I'm so glad to see you."

SAXCIES™
PROFILE:

Barry Weissman , SafetyXChange Contributor of the Year

Winner for SafetyXChange Contributor of the Year: Barry Weissman

by Catherine Jones

Criteria: The heartbeat of SafetyXChange are the articles and insights that its members and advisors contribute. This year, we created a special Saxcie™
award, the SafetyXChange Contributor of the Year award, to recognize one member who has made an outstanding contribution to the SafetyXChange community via articles, participation in the SXC forum and in other ways. And we asked SafetyXChange Members to vote for the winner.

The Winner: Barry R. Weissman REM, CSP, CHMM, CHS-IV, CIPS

Profile: Barry is Vice President of the Hillmann Group and Director of the Hillmann Institute of Training in Union, NJ. He's also involved with ASSE, ACHMM, AIHA and NFPA and an active member of the SafetyXChange Advisory Board. Since he joined the Advisory Board in 2005, Barry has:

Glenn and I cherish Barry not just because his contributions make our lives easier and add vitality to the community but because he's a good friend with a wry sense of humor. We are therefore quite gratified that the members of SafetyXChange have seen fit to vote Barry the recipient of the first ever Contributor of the Year award. Congratulations, Barry. You richly deserve this honor.

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