3 minute read
Do You Have an Attitude to Reducing Your Risk Exposure?
Do You Have an Attitude to Reducing Your Risk Exposure?
By Greg Plumley, FMIC DLC
“Accidents will happen,” goes the old saying, but are all accidents inevitable? Another well-known old saying is, “There’s no such thing as an accident.” Maybe some unavoidable lousy luck is out there, waiting for us, but, if we’re honest, we would have to admit that we have likely caused at least one accident through our own carelessness.
No one should have to go through life so averse to risk that they hide away in a bunker, but on the other hand, learning about potential hazards and being aware of your surroundings can only help you get through an accident-free day. Developing a better “safety attitude” could even save a life.
To evaluate your own safety attitude, ask yourself how often you think about safety on the job? If the answer is “not very much” or “only when a co-worker gets hurt,” then you could help yourself and those around you by developing a new attitude towards safety. Here’s a suggestion: Understand what, in your operation, is a high risk, then develop an attitude of making an impactful effort towards recognizing and eliminating those risks daily.
FMIC has identified six areas that significantly impact your risk levels daily. Attention towards these six items will help you reduce your risk and increase the overall attitude of your workforce.
1. NEW EMPLOYEES – Operations with one or more employees having less than one year’s experience on that job increase their logging incident exposure. Assign a co-worker to the new employee to mentor him.
2. TEAM EXPERIENCE Operations where employees have worked together as a crew for five years or longer reduces their logging incident exposure.
3. MECHANIZATION Fully mechanized operations that eliminate manual chainsaw operation from any production function on the job (especially felling) can dramatically reduce their logging incident exposure.
4. SAFETY ATTITUDE Operations in which the owner and employees demonstrate a genuine concern for safety, as manifested by consistent use of proper safety equipment, safe operating procedures, safety meetings, and enforced safety rules, and which have no tolerance for unsafe behavior, reduce their logging incident exposure.
5. SAFETY AWARENESS Operations with consistent safety awareness and training programs have safety-minded employees who expect the unexpected. Utilize safety meetings and articles to encourage reducing incident exposure.
6. ACCOUNTABILITY The leadership of your operations which demonstrates consistent and sustained accountability for infractions of safety rules, represents those who have created a truly safe work environment. Accountability consistent and combined with a genuine concern for employee safety reduces incident exposure.
Education is knowledge, and it takes knowledge to protect yourself from the ever-increasing risk level and the liabilities you face daily.
Please contact your Forestry Mutual Field Representative if you require more information; they are willing and ready to assist you.
