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Are Workplace Fatalities Inevitable?
Last week, I wrote about a communications director whose Communications Plan for a major construction project included the inevitable death of a worker. I took issue with her attitude and put the question to you: Do you believe that workplace fatalities are inevitable? Here are the results and one of your comments:
No, all workplace fatalities are preventable: 72%
Yes, sometimes unforeseeable events occur: 24%
Yes, but only in some industries: 4%.
From Monica:
You have no control over people’s life styles. We have had two deaths in the last 5 years at work but neither of them were work related. One was a contractor who suffered a heart attack and one was a field guy who had an embolism. We did save a truck driver’s life due to the rapid response of our on-site emergency response team.
As some of you pointed out, it wasn’t a fair question. But I still maintain that the corporate attitude was shocking. And, as JackieM noted in a comment to the article, “I wonder how many spouses would let their loved ones even apply for a job that had in the job description, ‘Workplace deaths are inevitable in this position’?.” Good question!
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I don't know why including the inevitability of a death at work should be something to take issue with, each time we perform a hazard assessment or practice confined space rescue or look at many of the other safety procedures that are a necessity, we take fatalities into consideration. The fact that they are including an "inevitable death" in their plan I think is just looking at things from a realistic point of view. Recognizing death in the plan can act as a motivator in that it allows people to build a defense to counter the inevitability of it. Firefighters know that death awaits them at every fire. There doesn't seem to be any shortages of recruits for that job.