construction safety

The Ripple Effects of a Safety Incident

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safety incident

Along with the tragic nature of a safety-related incident, there are unintentional costs and lost time that organizations might have to continuously pay for over a long period of time. 

Besides the tragic outcome of an injury, illness, or even death, accidents have a huge impact on your business. It is in your best interest to make sure that the people working for you are well-trained and experienced so that an accident doesn’t happen on your watch.

Why? Here are six reasons. 

1. Needless destruction of life and health is morally unjustified. We must protect life and health. The most obvious reason for proper safety training is that preventing the destruction of life and health is our primary concern as safety specialists. This is a moral obligation for the health and well-being of our employees.  

2. Failure to take necessary precautions against predictable accidents and occupational illnesses makes management and workers morally responsible for those accidents and occupational illnesses. If a potential problem or threat exists, and no action steps are taken to prevent an accident, the outcome will fall on you.

3. Accidents and occupational illnesses severely limit efficiency and productivity. The third reason for preventing accidents is because accidents and occupational illnesses limit efficiency and productivity because of downtime. This is an indirect cost from an accident, but a very costly one. Replacement labor can cost your company time and resources, along with possible sick pay, repairing damaged equipment, or even OSHA fines.

4. Accidents and occupational illnesses produce far-reaching social harm. The fourth reason for preventing accidents is because accidents and occupational illnesses can produce lasting damage to your reputation. Word gets around when accidents happen and it always paints a negative picture of a company in the public eye. We’ve always said that your clients will only think as much of you as they think of your safety personnel. Sending unprepared employees to a job will hurt your reputation because you will be sending them the wrong message about your company. With the right safety staff, you can send a message that says “We take safety and the lives of our employees seriously! We do our best in everything.”

5. The safety movement has demonstrated that its techniques are effective in reducing accident rates and promoting efficiency.

6. Prevent OSHA violations. The sixth reason for preventing accidents is because state and federal legislation mandates management responsibility to provide a safe workplace, so this is a legal requirement. OSHA violations could cost you thousands of dollars a day. Even the most unintentional violation can cause serious harm to your company.

To prevent the negative ripple of a safety incident, you must be proactive and fully train your safety staff. Using a proactive health and safety process will help an organization see a large return on investment through improved productivity, improved morale, decreased time away, and lower workers’ compensation insurance costs.

We believe having well-trained, high quality, experienced safety professionals on a job site is the best way to go for accident prevention. The lives of your employees, your reputation, and your bottom line are all at stake, but they will be in good hands with ResponsAble safety professionals on site. Give us a call at225-753-1909to talk with us about your upcoming projects.

One Good Way to Help Your Safety Staff Stay Focused On Safety

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staff focused on safety

Maintaining a safe work environment requires vigilance.  There are always competing priorities that force tough business decisions where we must guard against anything that might distract us from our safety culture and focus.

A common challenge for business managers in all disciplines is identifying what you should delegate and what you should not.  A few simple tests for when to delegate include:

  • • Are you spending energy and time on things that are not your core competency?
  • • Do you have options for delegation that can produce the desired results?
  • • Are there activities currently required of higher priority in your core competency?

I find a real estate valuation principle helpful in delegation decisions; “Highest and Best Use.”  Just like a real estate investor wants to use property for the property’s highest and best use to receive the best value, so should we seek to use our work time for it’s highest and best use.

Ask yourself, “What should I be doing that produces the most value to my business?”

The biggest obstacle to staying focused on your highest and best use of time is usually a perceived lack of people to whom you can delegate all the things that just need to be done.  There’s a lot to do and somebody has to do it.

I recognized this problem in the safety arena and decided I could offer solutions that would make a big improvement by helping safety managers stay focused on safety.

My company started as a safety consulting firm and after many years of seeing how much time both we and our clients spent on finding, recruiting, hiring, managing and transitioning all the various safety roles in the industrial and heavy commercial work place, I saw the light.  ResponsAble Safety Staffing was born with a new mission.

We help safety leaders stay focused on safety by providing experienced professional safety resources focused only on safety staffing.

Think for a moment about the activities involved to find, recruit, hire, manage and transition between jobs for all your safety related roles.  While critical to your success, those activities are not related to safety.

Staffing all of your safety roles takes a tremendous amount of time which distracts you from your highest and best use, safety.

Some people haven’t stopped to take inventory of the activities that go into staffing safety roles through a typical business cycle so I’ll summarize to make the point.

A typical project will include these fundamental steps and the associated time to get a safety team in place.

Developing and Publishing a good Position Description

Effective recruiting for any position requires a good job description to facilitate clear communication and expectations from initial recruiting contact and on to performance management should a candidate be hired.  A Position Description or Job Description also supports the development of a Job Post

Creating an effective Job Post

A Job Post is distinct from a Job Description in that the Job Post is usually shorter, focuses on the highlights and includes some favorable descriptions of the employer and work environment.  An effective Job Posting will draw far more qualified and desirable candidates than a long, dry job description or poorly worded job post.

Posting Jobs

A Job Post isn’t likely to be effective if you don’t post it in the right places, in the right formats and promoted the right way.  Various job boards have differing applications and it can take some time to learn the ins and outs.

Interviewing Candidates

Interviewing involves many steps in itself but I have lumped them all in an attempt to stay brief.  Contacting, screening and personal interviews are all required to navigate an interview of any one candidate for a job.  When you need more than one or two employees for a job, interviewing can become very time consuming and difficult to manage.

Testing Prospects

A good hiring process should include testing and evaluation to assure only qualified candidates make it onto a job site.  At ResponsAble we test all candidates and require acceptable passing criteria before they can progress in the hiring process.  The testing and confirming of credentials gets even more complicated and time consuming if you are hiring for diverse roles on a project.

Hiring Employees

Our clients incur a high cost every time they hire an employee.  Beyond the steps outlined above, the additional overhead cost associated with insurance, administrative processing requirements, and other benefits can total 50% of the employee’s salary.

Transitioning Employees

For project employees who may not stay for full career employment, you typically have costs and time to transition them out of a given role.  Sort of like unwinding the process costs to hire the employee to start.

The fundamental steps to hire employees to support a project of any size just takes a lot of time.  I can feel the man hours piling up even written in abbreviated form as I’ve done here.

So if you are a Safety Director or Safety Manager and want to keep your safety staff focused on Safety, ask yourself, “Are the recruiting and hiring steps for project safety staff the highest and best use of my or the team’s time?”

There are competent resources available to carry the burden of building a project safety team.  I have built my entire business upon carrying these burdens for our clients.  Consider delegating the staffing process for your industrial or heavy commercial project to people who specialize in doing just that.

If you think there might be a way to place more focus on Safety rather than the administration of recruiting and hiring, I’m happy to talk to you about how we can help.

Exposure to Asphalt Fumes Can Negatively Impact Your Health

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OSHA states that more than 500,000 workers are exposed to asphalt fumes. This common product releases fumes that can have a significant impact on your health.

Common side effects after exposure include:

  • Fatigue
  • Skin rash
  • Decreased appetite
  • Throat/eye irritation
  • Cough
  • Headaches
  • Skin cancer

Workers that could encounter these fumes in their work environment must be aware of the possible hazards associated with them. These can be minor or more severe depending on the amount of exposure and the worker. For example, in construction settings where asphalt is a primary material used, road workers are more at risk.

All workers at risk for being exposed to asphalt should receive proper training about health hazards and safety procedures.

If an employee will be working with asphalt, it is imperative to make sure they have the proper Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). To reduce exposure to asphalt fumes and other hazards, OSHA does require PPE to be worn.

According to The Texas Department of Insurance, here is the recommended PPE for handling heated asphalt:

  • Chemical goggles and an 8-inch, minimum-sized face shield
  • Loose clothing with collars closed and cuffs buttoned at the wrists
  • Thermal gloves with gauntlets that extend up the arm, worn loosely for quick removal if covered with hot asphalt
  • Boots with tops at least 6 inches high, laced without openings
  • Pants with cuffs which extend over the tops of the boots
  • Safety shoes at least 15 centimeters high and laced
  • Barrier creams and lotions applied for a thin film on skin, which act as a barrier against skin irritants worn with protective clothing
  • Long-handled sprayers with flexible hoses

Even when workers are careful, unfortunately accidents do happen. Should there be exposure to asphalt fumes, make sure that the worker is moved to fresh air. If they’re having trouble breathing, oxygen must be administered. If breathing stops, begin artificial respiration and have the worker examined by a health professional.

Stay safe, everyone!