Supervision

In any sport like football, hockey, or cricket, the players after entering the field gather together briefly, possibly getting instructions/strategy for the game ahead.

In the workplace also, I felt this is required, particularly for contract labor with instructions from the supervisor for the work. The supervisor will not be able to be present at all times in all works, but his instructions about the work, work procedure, hazards, protective measures, etc will help in the execution of the work safely.

People find excuses for not being able to monitor the work, complain about the workload, non-cooperation, etc. But, it is the supervisor's responsibility to ensure safety and should have proper plan for it.

Importance of readily available data for preventing disasters - an article

Recently, I came across an article from Kinsmen Group, as given below. It discussed the importance of readily available data on workplace activities and incidents to prevent workplace disasters and protect the employees. It is called smart data, in the news item. 

Following are some of the issues and observations made (data seems to be for USA):

1. As per OSHA and Labour department, in the year 2019, more than 5000 persons died 9,00,000 were injured at workplace.
2. Companies spend an average USD 7,500 for each lost-time workplace injury (we can call this as direct cost). Other costs consist of replacement of damaged equipment, reconstruction of facilities, compensation, etc. (As per theory, direct cost is only like a tip of the iceberg. And, cost of preventing an accident will be only about one fourth of the direct cost).
3. As per National Safety Council, cost of workplace injuries in the year 2018 was USD 170 billion.
4. Each fatality costs USD 1.0 million in medical costs, employer costs, and wage losses
5. In a fatal fire and explosion incident, it seems, the emergency personnel do not have information of chemicals involved, otherwise, they could have saved the lives. 
6. Digitization and availability of data easily is not yet compulsory by many certification agencies. Organizations follow data retrieval in general age old methods like physical search instead of going for easy methods by using the computer/cloud technology/internet
7. Data should be latest

Many of us definitely would have spent a lot of time in search of some information. It is my personal experience that on most of the occasions, I spent more than two hours to retrieve, and sometimes more than one person was engaged for information retrieval. And, on some occasions, I didn't find what I want. Availability of signed information will help us to support what remember/believe and use it to convince others for implementation of safety or whatever we would like to.

Digitizing the records with a provision to search will be helpful for us and our future generation. Some believe digitization means scanning the documents. But scanning without search option makes it useless. It is a primitive form. Instead of paper search, we have to search in computer page by page. Indexing these types of scanned pages may make life somewhat better. But, if scanning of documents is in readable text form to enable search with key words, and is available in encrypted form in cloud, like dropbox, mega, onedrive, pcloud, etc and is accessible with password protection to prevent unauthorized access, it will help a lot for productive use. 

Searchable scanned records helped us greatly in the analysis of similar incidents and find suitable solutions to prevent recurrence of the incidents for a safe workplace  

Updating of data is a continuous process. 

Knowledge management is very important and critical to ensure safe productivity. World renowned safety professional Dr Trevor Kletz stated in one of his books (What Went Wrong) that incidents keep repeating either in the same or different similar organizations. We have to learn from them and implement measures to prevent recurrence.

Another safety professional Mr O.P.Kharbanda stated in a booklet about Bhopal accident, that Safety is not costly. In fact, it is free. What we need is the will to implement. 

In one of the investigation reports, EPA made an observation which states, it is not the lack of knowledge that is responsible for the accident. It is the lack of use of the available information that is responsible for the accident.

How we can get the information at first place. If it is made available in a readily searchable form and is known the personnel how to use it, then this information management will help to achieve what we intended to.

Qualified technologies and personnel should be assigned for this and definitely organizations will reap the benefits from this.

https://www.prweb.com/releases/two_strategies_help_prevent_workplace_disasters_protect_employees_with_smart_data/prweb17681313.htm

Distraction to drivers from bill boards on the roads

Today, I was driving to workplace. Enroute, while glancing at advertisements, I narrowly missed hitting a pedestrian. The lady crossing the road stopped and was looking at me, whereas I was watching billboard located at height, thereby missing the road view totally. It is mistake on my part. I also felt like there should not be any distraction to the drivers. Drivers should concentrate on the road traffic and possibly these billboards for others in the vehicles. Else, there can be accidents or near miss incidents like I had today.

Person dies after long hours of work

An intern died after reportedly spending long hours of work. Legislations specify certain number of hours of work per day, per week, etc and limits on overtime hours also. However, these rules are mostly applied to factory workers and I am not sure whether they are applied to supervisors and blue collared employees in the same organization. 

This leads to spending long hours at work place by these people, either by force, or even if there is no requirement, may be to learn the work, or to get attention of higher authorities. This type of work is not possible forever. If somebody joins as trainee/apprentice and even for regular employees, managements of any establishment should strictly enforce working hours, instead of being a passive onlooker. Only then, these types of incidents can be avoided at the work place. It is all in work culture which is guided by safety culture of the organization. 

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/aug/21/bank-intern-death-working-hours

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/uk/Intern-at-a-London-bank-dies-after-working-for-72-hours/articleshow/21947167.cms

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/20/bank-of-america-intern-dies-after-working-three-straight-days.html

Training and its effectiveness

Training the employees for skills is a major task for any organization. And imparting skills to do the work safely is much more bigger task. Generally, class room safety training provides only basics, do's and dont's, SOPs, etc along with case studies. But, for the person to work safely, on the job training i.e. shopfloor training can be effective rather than class room training. And the person under on-the-job training requires proper guidance and supervision till he understands the implications and is moulded. This type of training may be costly for the managements as the number of persons trained under one instructor will be limited to a few at any given time. If the number of trainees increases, then the amount of time and attention by the instructor on each of the trainee will be reduced.

Though, nobody is interested in getting involved in accidents, still the occurrence of accidents indicate about the lack of knowledge and may be complacency developed over a period of time. With the on-the-job training and subsequently effective supervision can lead to accident-free workplace.

New EPA tool to assess safety of chemicals

The LINK does not give much information other than reporting the development. However, we can keep checking the EPA website for latest news and its applicability to chemicals in our work place.

Whether safety procedures cause stress at workplace

Sometimes I hear shopfloor people grumbling at safety supervisors that by seeing them, B.P. increases in shopfloor workers. Others say that they are afraid that safety manager will come to them to enquire on some issue. Shopfloor supervisors advise safety persons not to approach their workers directly to avoid undue stress. All such talk or apprehensions appear to be unwarranted unless people do not follow safety procedures or the safety man talks in a dominating manner.
Some safety professionals too think that they get truth, if they pose like a  tough guy. But, with my own experience, I can say that this is not true. Whatever the shopfloor person is willing to tell will escape from the scene next time as soon as he sees the tough talking safety guy. The smooth talking safety supervisors also should be careful that they are not taken for granted. They have to develop friendly networks in all departments so that before entering the shopfloor to enquire about unsafe conditions or investigate accidents / incidents, full information is obtained through these friendly networks.
When someone gives information on phone, safety person should not insist to know the name of the person so that he will feel secured and will have peace of mind. If he is willing, then safety person can declare his sources and also recommend for some appreciation and reward.
Stress will be felt by safety guys also when all shopfloor people surround him questioning his failure to identify and communicate hazards. This, I think should be handled by being visible in the shopfloor through frequent inspections,giving pep talks as often as it warrants and making the people to know about their responsibilities under law. Then, safety department persons will be viewed as their friends and get their help to solve safety issues at the shopfloor.
Workers will be stressed for other reasons also as it was mentioned in a news paper article today that spouse causes more stress than the boss. Again, males cause more stress to their spouse than the female. Other reasons for stress can be ill health, unfulfilled ambitions,  family issues, etc