Safety not only applies to the workplace.
An injury suffered off the job keeps an
employee away from work as surely as one
suffered while at work. The National
Safety Council estimates that off-the-job
injuries and fatalities cost U.S. businesses
almost $224 billion annually in lost
productivity.
Council research also shows 9 out of 10
fatalities and over two-thirds of disabling
injuries to workers each year occur off the job.
Considering these trends, proactive employers
are expanding the focus of their safety
programs to include the hours when
employees are away from work.
The National Safety Council's 2006 American
Worker Safety Survey indicates that in 2004,
about 5,000 workers died and 3.7 million
suffered disabling injuries as a result of
accidents occurring in the workplace. That
same year, nearly 44,100 workers died and
6.8 million American workers were disabled as
a result of injuries suffered while they were
off
the job.
The impact on deaths and injuries in U.S.
homes and communities:
- About 1 out of 16 people experience an
unintentional injury each year.
- About 39 percent of the deaths and 55% of
the disabling injuries involve workers off the
job.
- A fatal injury occurs in the home every 14
minutes and a disabling injury every 4
seconds.
- The five leading causes of fatal injury are
falls; poisoning; choking; drowning; and fires
and flames.
- Smoke inhalation accounts for a majority of
deaths in home fires.
- A public fatal injury occurs every 19
minutes, and a disabling injury occurs every 3
seconds.
- The four leading fatal causes of death in
public places are falls, poisoning, choking, and
drowning.
- People 65 and older suffer nearly half of
the fatalities in public injuries.
With these statistics, it should be the focus of
all employers to support and develop an
employees' awareness of the importance of off-
the-job safety: Employees spend more
time off-work than on. Off-work, people
are at risk for driving injuries; slips,
trips and
falls; strains and sprains; chemical exposures;
and more. In short, they are at risk for many of
the same injuries they might experience at
work. Because people may be more mobile in
their personal lives, driving injuries and
slips,
trips and falls can be even greater risks.
Rather than expecting workers to switch
safety ON when they come to work, just the
opposite can occur. They switch safety OFF
when they leave work. It's surely not a
coincidence that many companies report
injuries occurring disproportionately on a
worker's first day back from vacation or
weekend time off. This is what is called a
MISS - Monday's injury safety syndrome.
If you want employees to be safer at home
and at work, help them become more receptive
to a universal safety message. Workers
often resist being shown how to be more
effective and safer in jobs they've done for
many years. But many professionals find that
the more resistant people are to learning new
ways to operate at work, the better it is to
show
them how to be safer in their off-work
activities.
Help your workers understand that by
practicing safe actions at work, they can
develop skills to help them where it really
counts - at home and in their favorite
activities.
Reduce exposure to cumulative injuries at
work if you want to reduce injuries at
home. Because many sprains and strains
are the straw-that-broke-the-camel's-back
cumulative in nature, it's important to reduce
exposure and concentration of forces into
vulnerable body parts (back, wrists, knees,
neck, shoulders, ankles) at home, where
employees spend 75 percent of their lives
(assuming a 40-hour work week).
If you're trying to develop new behaviors,
encourage practice. One exposure (e.g. in
a training seminar) is unlikely to change
behavior. But when people apply newly
learned strategies and skills off-work, they can
build behaviors that apply everywhere.
Create a culture of safety directors and
coaches to improve on and off-work safety.
Help all your employees become effective,
thinking, acting safety directors of their own
homes and lives. Global class safety
performance is founded on organizational
members engaging in a high-level safety
lifestyles everywhere they work, live and play.
Consider redirecting safety from
enforcement towards engagement.
Enforcement is limited and the results can
be frustrating when employees aren't doing
what they're being asked to do. And a forceful
approach can backfire, resulting in pushback
behaviors from workers determined to show
they won't be told what to do. Too often, these
defiant actions are unsafe ones. It's better
to positively offer benefits than try to force
compliance.
Building a Safety Culture Begins at
Home Granted, acceptance of off-work
safety as a concept isn't new. Now, in a
work environment where workers are doing
more with less and aging to boot, it's a perfect
time to upgrade your off-the-job safety
approach. Go beyond once-a-year safety
fairs or occasional mentions of off-work
applications for safety training and move
towards a tangible, structured, practical and
motivating off-the-job safety system.
Offer everyone in your organization the
inspiration and tools to become self-motivated
and self-regulating. Provide mental strategies
and physical skills they readily can port to a
wide range of off-work activities. Show them
specific applications that are home-based (for
example, the same methods for pushing a
heavy cart at work can also apply to pushing a
filled shopping cart).
The lines between work and home, once highly
separated, are blurring. By focusing on
all-the-time safety thoughts and actions, and
emphasizing off-work approaches, safety can
be significantly raised to the next
level, as well as boosting receptivity,
personal responsibility and
motivation.
Based on an article written by Robert
Pater
