If You Don’t Have Something Important To Say About Safety Then Shut Up
By Phil La Duke who says:
What harm is there in talking about safety trivia? Plenty. In this week’s post I explore the dangers of pointless safety talks. I hope you will give it a read and let me know what you think.
Read the whole article here: http://philladuke.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/if-you-dont-have-something-important-to-say-about-safety-then-shut-up/#!
Extract
Years ago I worked security at a power plant. I wasn’t a peace officer, far from it; in fact, I wasn’t even allowed to carry a big flashlight to protect myself. My job, plain and simply was to observe and report to actual peace officers, who would sort out the things that needed sorting. The job, while not exactly cerebral, did serve as a valuable source of life lessons, chief among them, that I never wanted to work in security again. Not to denigrate the security profession; it’s just not for me. One thing that the security firm for which I worked did particularly well was “roll call”.
Every shift began with a roll call; it reminded me of Hill Street Blues. All the officers were required to attend, and the shift commander ran down the things we needed to know do safety and effectively do our jobs.
These sessions weren’t some lame safety talk; we talked all the things that were unusual that day; what to watch for, things to consider, special precautions we might need to take to protect our lives, that sort of thing. Officers were expected to ask questions and we even talked about things that had happened at other sites and what the circumstances needed to be for something similar to happen at our site. We were expected to be prepared at all times and for that to happen our leaders had to provide us will all the information we needed to do our jobs.
Contrast that to the average safety talk where bored workers take turns pretending to read a memo passed around before scrawling out a signature that “proves” that they had the information read to them and that they understood it.
Do you have any thoughts? Please share them below