Monday, the first day of the week is always a good time to discuss anything about safety. As the slogan goes "Safety First". But what does safety first means?
It basically means doing the safety part first before doing other things. Since safety affects the well being and lives of the person, it is just right to discuss first how can we safeguard the employees in the workplace.
One safety-first example that we did in my previous company is to begin the weekly production meeting discussing safety. Every week we appoint a lead person to discuss the corrective action done based on the last accident or the last inspection or audit, then he will proceed with the update on the safety statistics. He will also lead a discussion on a safety topic for the week. Snack were served during the discussion to encourage everyone to participate.
To explain some important principles in safety, it is always better to start with definition of terms.
Safety - is the control of accidental loss
Loss - is the avoidable waste of any resources
Accident - is an event, which results in unintended harm or damage
Incident - is an event which may or may not result in unintended harm or damage
The expansion of safety's definition accomplishes three things:
It basically means doing the safety part first before doing other things. Since safety affects the well being and lives of the person, it is just right to discuss first how can we safeguard the employees in the workplace.
One safety-first example that we did in my previous company is to begin the weekly production meeting discussing safety. Every week we appoint a lead person to discuss the corrective action done based on the last accident or the last inspection or audit, then he will proceed with the update on the safety statistics. He will also lead a discussion on a safety topic for the week. Snack were served during the discussion to encourage everyone to participate.
To explain some important principles in safety, it is always better to start with definition of terms.
Safety - is the control of accidental loss
Loss - is the avoidable waste of any resources
Accident - is an event, which results in unintended harm or damage
Incident - is an event which may or may not result in unintended harm or damage
The expansion of safety's definition accomplishes three things:
- Not limited to injury, it expands the scope of safety to include property damage
- Does not confuse injury with accident. Injuries and illnesses result from accidents but accidents are not limited to injury or illnesses. This distinguishes the event from the result. The event, which is the accident, is controllable while the result, which is the severity of loss, is a matter of chance. This distinction allows the focus of effort on accidents and not just the injuries they may cause.
- If the event results in property damage without the any injury, the property damage is still considered an accident and within the scope of concern of safety.
Accident Ratio Study
Some years ago, a study of 1.7M accidents in 21 industries led by Frank Bird showed that there is a fixed ratio between losses if different severity (and accidents where no loss occurred i.e near miss)
This model only shows that if we limit or control the near misses, we can certainly limit property damage, minor injuries and avoid serious or major injuries.
That's all for now...I'll try to update my safety topics every Monday...
If you have any questions or comments, please be kind to post them.
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