Communication - its importance in personal and official matters

There is no news paper delivery today as it was a declared holiday yesterday on the occasion of Sankranthi festival. I was going through yesterday's Times of India news paper and read about the advice of a famous couple of Hindi cinema (bollywood) to be successful in life. They mentioned about the need for PROPER communication between the persons and not to take for granted just because they are known to you. It is true in every sense.

Let it be at residence, or office or on the roads, when we watch the way we talk with strangers/seniors, we find that we talk with respect, use good language, take efforts to explain and make them understand. And when it comes to our family members, all this will be missing and will be trying to show (may be unconsciously) who is the boss at home. Most of the time our talk will be in harsh language and will be shouting without reason. If sense prevails, atleast after sometime, we will apologize for the way we talked.

This is true at office also. When we talk with subordinates, we talk differently and while talking with boss, we are subdued. This leads to lot of communication gap and failure to achieve what we want. Before saying, for a moment, let us enter into other's shoe and visualise how our directions will be received/understood. If we are clear, then we can say what we want. If not, then we have to do communication the way it gets the result what we want.

In safety issues also, communication plays a great role. If there is no proper communication, then operators assume something and things may go wrong. Blaming the operator after an incident will not serve any purpose. Operators also should be bold to ask when they do not know what to do or how to do. Similarly, when we, the safety professionals do not communicate, or fail to communicate in simple language, then we can't expect safety at the shopfloor. We have to explain to the plant managers, contractors, occupier about their responsibilities w.r.t safety and advise them how to do in safe manner. Training, news letters, etc are aids in communication. Safety work permits, clearances are also form communication, but for the particular job/modification/new work. Many accident investigations stress about lack of communication/coordination.

Collective wisdom is available in the form of legislations. We have to communicate these to shopfloor people so that they can understand and implement. Of course, there will be few rebels who do not want to follow the rules and regulations and for them, we have to take into confidence of the management and punish them by caution, warnings, penalties and termination in that order.

Some more short videos on safety

Causes may appear simple and we find them every day but can lead to major accidents as some of the incidents depicted in the videos of the following link. http://www.safetyvideoshop.com.au/free-safety-videos.php

Video on Manual Handling

Improper manual handling can break the backs of workers and here is a video on manual handling which can be viewed in the following link.

http://www.manualhandlingguidance.net/Index.htm

Equipment/structure failure - Fabrication details are also required

A belated new year greetings.

Of late, I am not getting any motivation to blog as what I see every day are nothing but same issues on which I already mentioned in my earlier blogs. People talk on safety but do not care to implement; talk on safety culture but do not follow; utter chaos on the roads with least regard for traffic rules or pedestrians; no respect for signals even by pedestrians who cross the roads even when signage is ON for vehicles, etc.

Now, the discussion on the title of this blog: Quite a few occasions, I read about collapse of buildings/ overhead structures/bridges, failure of equipment (leakages/rupture/bursting/collapse), and a few years ago I even heard from my wife that the chassis of a two-wheeler scooter of 1 year old broke at the centre, etc.
Though, people claim that the design is as per applicable codes like, NBC, ASME, IS, etc, still if the failures are taking place implies that the fabrication/manufacturing/usage is not proper (assuming design is perfect). It also means that quality checks are not proper, even if fabrication/construction is to be blamed.

Many times people rely on the designs and assume that everything is going to be alright giving not much attention to other aspects.

It is sad that though people chant, "SAFETY FIRST, QUALITY NEXT & PRODUCTION LAST" on list of priorities, actually it is the other way. One can not say that quality gets second priority to safety, as both safety and quality are interlinked and are integral. Safety during construction/fabrication ensures well being of the workers on the shopfloor/in the plant at that time, but a product with poor quality endangers the lives of users and those around. Factory workers are aware of hazards in their job, but not the public who use the produce.
The number of persons going to be affected can also be a huge number depending upon the product we consider. A poor quality waist belt may affect the user alone. But, a poorly constructed building/bridge can affect many lives.

Hence, we have to give top priority for quality also to ensure safety of all.