Basics of Workplace Safety

What is safety? Safety is the stage of being safe; the condition of being protected from harm or any other danger. Safety can also refer to the control of recognized hazards to achieve an acceptable level of risks. At a workplace, We consider an employee to be safe when he or she is competent to do the job in terms of skills and knowledge; when he or she is equipped to do the job in terms of right tools, resources, and personal protective equipment; and when the employee is aware of the hazards and risks, dissent at the work environment and the task that he or she is going to perform.

02. Hazard and Risk

Now let us look at what is a hazard and what is a risk. Hazard is a potential source of heart, whereas risk is the possibility of something bad happening. Let us understand this through examples.

An engineering and construction environment is full of heavy equipment and tools. We will have machines repairing at base where there could be oil spill and there could be hazardous chemicals.

We identify this environment as hazardous since this has potential source for chemical hazard, electrical hazard, physical hazard where you can trip, fall from the oil or any other spills.

Now, risk is a possibility of something happening. If a worker deliberately walking on a wet surface or an oil spill, or if a worker walking at the workshop without a safety hat or goggles when men at work; where there could be an airborne material and heavy materials can be lifted.

03. What is an Incident?

Now let us look at what is an incident. An instance of something happening, an event or an occurrence that interrupts the normal procedure, but not resulting any injuries, but rather results in damage that impacts facilities, grounds, or equipment.

Now in this picture, you see a mechanic has topped a wheel loader on a bit inclined ground to wash it clean. He got off from the machine after applying the parking brakes. But the machine began to move slowly as the parking break was not a applied firmly.

04. Unsafe Condition and Unsafe Act

What is an unsafe condition and what is an unsafe act? Unsafe conditions are the risks or hazards present at workplace that may lead to human injury or death.

Unsafe acts can be defined as any activity by workers that is not in accordance with the established safety standards, and that can lead to accidents.

Some examples of unsafe condition and unsafe act. Machine rotating part without safety guard is an example of unsafe condition whereas operating on that machine is an unsafe act performed by the worker.

Working at height is an unsafe condition and not wearing personal protective equipment while working at height is an unsafe act. Loose wiring on machine or at workplace can lead to electric fire or electric shocks. This is an unsafe condition whereas operating on a machine which has loose wiring is an unsafe act.

05. Near miss and Accident

Near Miss

Now let us learn about near misses and accidents. A near miss is an unplanned event that did not result in any injury, illness, or damage but had the potential to do so. Remembering he has forgotten to support the boom cylinder on a wheel loader; a mechanic has come back to it and pulled the connecting pit. Then the cylinder dropped and nearly hit him, which you see in the picture.

The mechanic in this particular picture has not got injured, so it is a nearmiss or a close call, but if the cylinder has hit him or if he got injured, we categorize it as an accident.

Accident

Now, let's look at accident in detail. Accident is an unplanned event that result in any injury, illness, or damage. Now the same situation, remembering he has forgotten to support the boom cylinder on a wheel.

A mechanic has come back to it and pulled the connecting feeling. Then the cylinder dropped and hit him. That we call an accident.

Summery

Now, let us summarize all the terminologies that we learned. On the first picture, you see a forklift and a forklift operator in a warehouse. A coworker has seen the forklift in operation and he chooses not to move by. Because he understands that this situation is hazardous or this environment is hazardous.

In the second picture, the worker decides to walk through it. So he identifies this is a hazardous environment, but he takes the risk by walking through it.

On the third picture, you see the forklift, the boxes have fallen on the forklift, so we categorize this as a near miss because though the boxes have fallen on the forklift, the operator has not got injured or there's no damage.

On the final picture, you'll see the heavy box fallen on the worker, and the worker has collapsed on the flu, which we categorize as accident.

06. Why organizations need safety in the work floor

In this module, we will be talking about the importance of inculcating safety culture at workplaces. Why do organization need safety at workplace or workshop or workflow? The prime objective of any health and safety program at any organization is to give employees a sense of safety, which is the idea that they will return home safe and sound.

When employees feel safe, it directly impacts their contribution and results, high performance, greater productivity, and improved, increased job satisfaction. This automatically helps to lower absenteeism and rates. Strategically, this ensures greater work participation, increased social inclusion, and increased individual team and organization resilience.

07. Why we need to report incidents?

Why do we need to report incidents? It is important and necessary to report incidents as they occur. Reporting is not about attributing blame, but more about identifying possible workplace issues so they don't happen again. Reporting incidents, accidents, hazards near misses, risks helps prevent reoccurrences, provides greater understanding of safety risks, create lessons learned within your organization & the industry, and create safety minded culture.

08. What should be reported?

What are the things we should report? We learned in our previous module, what do we identify as hazards, What are near misses, unsafe acts what are first aid cases and what are property damages and what are accidents. Reporting them will prevent from reoccurring, and also share the knowledge within the community.

09. Means of Accidents

In this module, we will be talking about means of accidents. One of the key objectives of encouraging safety culture at workplaces is to minimize accidents and eliminate the causes of accidents. We can witness different kinds of accidents at workplace or different means of accidents at workplace. One of the common means of accidents at workplace is fall, slip or trip.

There could be fall from height or fall from same ground level, which we call a slip or trip. Another common means of accidents is machine injury. Workers may get injured by a moving machine or moving parts of a machine. There could be situations where a worker could get in between two moving machines or two moving parts of a machine and get crushed.

Let's talk about accidents due to the chemicals or related substances whereas a worker could come in contact with chemicals such as battery acid, which will cause burn and explosion when combined with other chemicals. Substances like Antioch agents, if swallowed or inhaled; it might cause prolonged illness. Electricity and heat is another mean of accident, which will result burn.

These are the common and primary means of accidents at workplace or workflow.

10. Causes for Accidents

Now let's talk about courses for an accident. The contributing factors for an accident are called as causes of accident. There are several theories to understand the causes of accidents,

· Domino's theory

· Systems theory

· Epidemiologic theory

· Accident -Incident theory

· Human factor theory

are some of them.

In this module, we will be talking about the Dominos theory, which is also called as Henrich Theory. Henri's Domino's theory states that the accidents result from a sequential chain of events. Metaphorically, like a line of dominoes falling over when one of dominoes falls, it triggers the next one and the next.

But removing a key factor such as unsafe condition or unsafe act, it prevents from starting off this chain of reaction. Herich poses five metaphorical dominoes labeled with accident causes.

They are,

· Social environment and ancestry

· Fault of person

· Unsafe act, or mechanical or physical Hazard

· Accident

· Injury.

Hedrich defines each of these dominoes explicitly and gives advice on minimizing or eliminating their presents in the sequence.

Social environment and Ancestry

The first domino in the sequence deals with worker’s personality. Henrich explains that undesirable personality traits such as stubbornness, greed, and recklessness can be passed along through inheritance or develop from a person's social environment and that both inheritance and environment contribute to falls of person.

Fault of Person

The second domino also deals with workers' personality traits, fault of person. Henrich explains that in borne or obtained character flaws such as bad temper ignorance and recklessness contribute to accident causation.

According to Henrich natural or environment flaws in the worker's family all life cause these secondary personal defects, which are then served contributors to unsafe act and unsafe conditions .

Unsafe act and Unsafe condition

The third domino deals with Henrich direct cause of incidents. As mentioned about henrich defines these factors as things like starting machinery without warning and absence of rail guards.

Henrich felt that unsafe acts and unsafe conditions were the central factor in preventing incidents and the easiest causation factor to remedy, a process which he linked to lifting one of the dominoes out of life Henrich defines four reasons why people commit unsafe acts,

· Improper attitude,

· Lack of knowledge or skill.

· Physical unsuitability

· Improper mechanical or physical environment.

He later goes on to subdivide these categories into direct and underlying courses. For example, he says, a worker who commits an unsafe act may do so because he or she is not convinced that the appropriate preventive measure is necessary and because of an inadequate supervision.

While using a pressure gun and doing a pressure wash of a heavy equipment, workers should definitely wear safety goggles. In this picture, you'll see the worker without safety goggles. It may be because the worker does not understand the importance of wearing safety goggles or he does not have the supervision of his supervisor about the safety standards

Accident

Henrich says, The occurrence of a preventable injury is the natural culmination of a series of events or circumstances, which invariably occur in a fixed and logical order. He defines accidents as events such as falls of persons, striking of persons by flying objects are typical accidents that can cause injury.

Injury

Now let's talk about injury. Injury results from accidents and some types of injuries Henrich specifies are cuts and broken bones. To be fair to he, he does insist that the responsibility lies, first of all with the employer. Hendrich specifies that a truly safety conscious manager will make sure his foreman and his workers do as they're told.

Henrish’s remedy was such non-compliance, strict supervision, remedial training, and discipline.

11. Outcomes of Accidents

Now let's talk about the outcomes of accidents. Obviously, there are negative outcomes from an accident. One of the primary negative outcome of an accident is the physical and mental health of the injured worker. The next is the lowered morale and dissatisfaction of the workers in the workflow.

There are financial implications which are attributed to the company in terms of damaged equipment, damaged assets and financial penalties in terms of regulatory affairs. However, there could be some positive outcomes from an accident where increased investment on health and safety systems, increased caution and importance of health and safety standards among employees and better adherence of safety protocols among employees.

12. Cost of an Accident

Now, let us talk about cost of an accident. Financial implications or costs of an accident is categorized as direct cost and indirect cost. Direct costs are visible costs and which can be directly associated with the. Costs that cannot be directly associated to the accident, but it has occurred because of the accidents are indirect costs.

We can more understand this through iceberg theory. The picture is shown on the slide. As shown in the picture, the top of the iceberg, which is the visible part, is similar to the direct cause, which is visible and directly identifiable. These are Hospital charges, medical charges, doctor fee, loss of working time, loss of income, penalty fee, or government leaves, etc, whereas indirect calls is a hidden pulse of an accident, which are increase of medical premiums, cost involved in redoing the job, loss of productivity or performance among workers due to the low morale and equipment rentals.

Now let us ask our self a question. What is a real cost of an accident? The real cost of an accident is the employees physical and mental health, and also the morale of the coworkers. So it is important that we take care of one another and we save at a workplace and return home safe.