Safety Net | January 2025

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Tips to Start the New Year off Right

It’s almost time to bid this year a farewell and ring in a new one. But what should be a time of festivity and joy can often turn into a safety nightmare, sometimes with deadly consequences.

Whether you’re gearing up for a New Year’s Eve party or planning to celebrate at home, keep the following safety tips in mind to start the New Year off the right way – the safe way.

NEW YEAR’S EVE SAFETY TIPS FOR THE WORKPLACE

Even if your workplace isn’t hosting a New Year’s celebration, you could still be at risk for safety-related incidents. Employees who start celebrating early or come to work after a night of drinking could pose a risk to others workers.

Considering the following safety tips for the workplace this New Year’s Eve:

• Remind employees to be responsible when consuming alcohol on New Year’s Eve.

• Urge employees not to come to work hungover. Let them know the potential safety consequences of working under the influence of alcohol.

• Remember that serving alcohol at a company-hosted party could make you liable for any alcohol-related incidents. The smart idea is to avoid serving alcohol at a company event.

• Keep decorations out of the way of walkways and heat sources. This can help prevent slips and falls, as well as mitigate your risk of fire.

NEW YEAR’S EVE SAFETY TIPS FOR THE HOME

New Year’s Eve celebrations can vary, from small gatherings with friends to large-scale parties with alcohol and fireworks. Help them celebrate at home safely with the following reminders.

• Know your alcohol limit and don’t drink more than you can handle.

• Alternate each alcoholic beverage with a glass of water to stay hydrated and slow the alcohol’s effects.

• Be aware of your surroundings at all times.

• Keep alcohol away from children and pets.

• Make sure that food isn’t left out for too long. Eating food served at the wrong temperature can leave you vulnerable to foodborne illnesses.

• Even if you aren’t consuming alcohol, it’s important to be wary of the people who are. Recognize when someone may have had too much to drink, and make sure they don’t drink and drive.

• If you’re hosting guests, offer them a place to sleep to prevent them from having to drive home. Even if they aren’t drinking, they may encounter someone on the road who has been drinking.

NEW YEAR’S CELEBRATION SAFETY TIPS

Lots of bars and hotels host their own New Year’s Eve parties, but don’t let the music, free food, and drink discounts cloud your judgment. It’s even more important to exercise caution at public parties. These safety tips might just save your life:

• If you’re going to a party, take a friend with you! Going alone can put you at a higher risk of incident. Having a friend can help you hold yourself accountable, plus it lets someone know where you are.

• Don’t leave your drink unattended.

• Don’t leave your car overnight. New Year’s Eve is one of the biggest nights for car thefts and break-ins.

STAY SAFE ON THE ROAD

Ideally, you won’t have to drive anywhere on New Year’s Eve. But if you’re attending a party outside the home and can’t stay overnight, keep the following road safety tips in mind.

• Never drive under the influence of alcohol, even if you’ve only had one drink or don’t feel intoxicated.

• Keep your phone charged in case you need to call for a ride or experience an emergency.

• Keep in touch with your group. If you get separated, check in to let them know you’re safe.

DON’T FORGET ABOUT THE PETS!

Whether you’re celebrating at home or elsewhere, your pets’ safety should be considered. If you have pets at home, consider the following suggestions to protect them on New Year’s Eve.

• Keep pets in a garage or outdoor pen to prevent them from running away. Fireworks can frighten pets and may cause them to run into the road or run away from home.

• Keep pets away from food, fireworks, and alcohol at your party.

• Make sure your pet is wearing an ID in case it were to escape.

COMMIT TO SAFETY IN THE NEW YEAR

The New Year is a chance for a fresh start, commit to making it a safe and prosperous year.

Happy New Year from all of us at EHS Insight!

11 Construction Topics to Help Construct Your Own Toolbox Talks

01.18.2023 | EHS Today

It can be tricky to find readymade toolbox talks for the construction industry. Every construction site looks a little bit different, and as any construction safety pro will tell you, their hazards are constantly evolving. This makes the need for constructionrelated toolbox talks especially important, as they’re often a primary way to highlight safety situations that are in constant flux. It also means that you probably need to make your own.

There are plenty of topics that are appropriate for toolbox talks for construction workers. The list below is hardly definitive, and it concentrates on topics that apply to many different worksites, and on offering a fresh look to well-worn issues. So if you need inspiration for your next construction safety talk, take a look through these eleven ideas.

1. LIFTING TECHNIQUE

Safety meetings and toolbox talks are one of the best ways to protect workers from back injuries . This is because lifting sizeable objects is such a common task on some construction sites that workers can become desensitized to the risks it poses. As a result, they can eventually slip into bad habits with their lifting technique. And when a back injury occurs, it can have negative consequences for years.

With that said, there’s an unavoidable obstacle in giving construction crews a toolbox talk on back safety. Picking up and moving things is such a frequent occurrence on the worksite, and it feels like such a basic activity, that many people feel like they don’t need any reminders.

One option, aside from the usual reinforcements of safe lifting methods, is to talk about the consequences of back injuries. One of the tenets of 24/7 safety is that workers are motivated by things that affect their life outside of work. Try asking workers how their life might be altered if they hurt their back.

You can also ask how a worker’s back injury might affect their loved ones—two common responses include a longterm reduction in family income and limiting a worker’s ability to do family activities. The goal here is to show workers why it’s important to think twice about seemingly simple actions like lifting heavy objects properly or asking for help when they need it.

2. PPE

Personal protective equipment is a cornerstone of any safety program. And when it comes to construction worksites, where hazards are many and engineering solutions are limited, PPE use is truly essential.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t always mean that workers will wear hard hats, safety gloves and other equipment when they need it. To keep the importance of PPE front of mind, consider running regular toolbox talks on construction incidents that could be prevented by wearing protective equipment. You can also provide a rundown of PPE best practices.

The goal here is to improve PPE compliance rates by making sure everyone recognizes the value of PPE; knows when, where and how to use PPE; and that everyone’s equipment is in good working shape. Because while PPE is the last line of defense, it should be at the top of your list for tailgate talks.

3. PPE AGAIN, BUT FROM ANOTHER ANGLE

If you’ve covered the basics in the last item, there’s still more work to do. Because PPE is such a vital part of construction safety, it’s worth spending extra time, and extra toolbox talks, confirming how workers are faring with their personal protective equipment.

Try ditching the usual reminders about wearing PPE, and instead start asking some questions about not wearing PPE, like the following:

• “What’s one reason why someone might forget to wear their PPE?”

• “What time of day do you think people are least likely to use their protective equipment?”

• “Let’s say you knew you were going to take off your PPE at some point today. When and where do you think that would be?”

It’s important to take a no-blame attitude with these questions. Make sure you take a positive approach and let workers know you won’t get mad about their answers. The goal here is to highlight situations that might cause workers to forego using their PPE so that they’ll be better prepared to wear their protective equipment in those scenarios.

4. WEATHER CONDITIONS

The weather affects safety in all sorts of ways. High temperatures can bring heat stress and exhaustion. Low temperatures can cause frostbite and slippery conditions. In all cases, there is the possibility of equipment damage and temporary changes to worksite conditions.

It’s never a bad idea to remind workers about the dangers posed by weather. Many may seem obvious, but it’s still a good idea to remind folks about the need for sunscreen and constant hydration in the summer, and the dangers of the cold and ice in the winter.

Don’t forget about the secondary effects of the weather too. A flash freeze will require people to move slower and necessitate giving vehicles in motion an extra-wide berth in case they skid. The heat can make construction workers more irritable and require extra breaks—meaning they need to attend to frustration, fatigue, and any other human factors that might be amplified by the weather.

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5. “WHERE IS THE SMOKE?”

You can take a where’s-the-smoke approach to a construction tailgate talk in a couple of different ways. The first is to make it literally about fires in the workplace . Ask each member of your crew where they think a fire is most likely to break out on the worksite, and what they think will cause it. Then, have them talk as a group and evaluate each potential fire hazard or location. As long as you emphasize that there are no right or wrong answers, this can be one way to get everyone thinking and discussing fire safety.

The second way of asking “Where is the smoke?” is to do so in a more metaphorical way, by asking workers if they’ve noticed any signs (that is to say, smoke) that any sort of safety incident might happen? If the response is crickets, then ask what signs or signals they might look for that could indicate an incident is about to happen, and/or where they’re most (or least) likely to see a signal that an incident could occur.

6. LARGE MACHINERY OR EQUIPMENT— EVEN IF WORKERS WON’T BE USING IT THEMSELVES.

Large machines and equipment are one of the most common sources of massively hazardous energy on many worksites. This includes forklifts and trucks as well as larger machinery such as cranes and excavation equipment. As such, they are an obvious topic for construction toolbox talks. What may be less obvious is just how varied the tailgate talks on this topic can be. It’s essential that you review the ins and outs of any equipment that workers will be operating. Just as importantly, talk with workers about vehicles that will be present in the workplace alongside them. This means that you’ll likely want to conduct the occasional toolbox talk on forklifts and other large equipment that could present a danger to workers on the ground.

Consider asking your construction crew to discuss how they can stay safe when these vehicles are around, how they can tell whether an operator has noticed that a pedestrian is present, and what signs they can look for that piece of equipment (or its driver) might be at a greater risk of injuring someone or causing an incident.

7. HUMAN FACTORS

Human factors are mental and physical states that affect people’s actions. When workers are in a rush, they’re more likely to take a safety shortcut. When they’re complacent, they’re more likely to overlook a safety hazard. When

workers are fatigued or frustrated—well, you get the idea. Human factors increase the risk of an incident or injury. And managing human factors is a crucial component of construction safety —which means it’s also an ideal subject for a safety meeting.

One of the best options is to conduct a constructionrelated safety talk on a specific human factor. For example, having a discussion about fatigue is a great way to highlight the dangers of being tired, the times of day when fatigue is most likely to lead to an injury, and the steps that workers can take to mitigate the effects of tiredness.

There are plenty of ways to incorporate human factors into your toolbox talks . Doing so can lessen the dangers posed by these mental and physical states. But perhaps the best way to protect against human factors is by implementing a proper human factors training program. It will give workers the tools they need to properly contend with fatigue and other states. And, armed with the knowledge and awareness provided by training, it will make these toolbox talks and other construction safety measures a lot more effective too.

8. EMERGENCY PLANS

Emergency plans are an essential component of any workplace safety plan. As any safety professional will tell you, they also seem to be the first thing that workers forget about. Toolbox talks provide an opportunity to remind construction workers about the major points in your worksite’s emergency plan.

One of the main reasons why emergency plans tend to go in one ear and out the other is that they are presented as a lecture rather than as a lesson. In your construction toolbox talk on emergency plans, try taking a cue from key adult learning principles in safety . In particular, do your best to incorporate elements of social learning by encouraging discussions and applications of their knowledge of emergency plans, rather than just rattling off a list of emergency procedures and meeting points.

9. FALLING FROM HEIGHT

Approximately one-third of all construction fatalities are due to falls, according to the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety . That’s been the case for a while, so it shouldn’t be much of a surprise. But when you look under the hood at some of the underlying numbers, and there’s one detail that really stands out—the single most deadly height on a construction site isn’t actually all that high.

In fact, a quarter of all fall-related deaths in the construction industry occur from only six to ten feet. As this free guide on working at heights says, that’s because it’s both a common height to work at, and it doesn’t feel like a particularly high elevation. Both of these factors can breed a high degree of complacency, leading to a huge number of falls—some of which are deadly.

If you’re holding a construction toolbox on the danger of falling from height, one option is to run through the standard reminders about ladder safety and working at height procedures. Beyond that, you can play a guessing game with workers about what they think the most deadly height is. This can help re-calibrate their perception of the risk of working on ladders and roofs.

10. RISK OF FALLING OBJECTS

Falls are a massive source of danger on construction sites. But they’re hardly the only hazard presented by working at heights. As the article “ The Case for Managing Human Factors at Heights ” demonstrates, someone is injured by a dropped object every ten minutes. This means that falling objects can be just as—if not more—deadly than falling people.

The danger of dropped objects is a prime topic for a toolbox talk for construction workers—for both people who work at heights and for those who work on the ground. For the former, emphasize the need to keep tools tethered and to avoid rushing and other human factors that can increase the risk of dropping an object.

For workers at ground level, focus your tailgate discussion on the need to wear head protection. You can also talk about staying aware of people working above them and the importance of steering clear of areas where tools and other objects could be dropped.

11. “IT’S MY FIRST DAY”

This is a great option if you think your construction toolbox talks have become a little stale or feel like you’re in a rut.

Here’s how an its-my-first-day tailgate discussion works. Tell workers: “Pretend it’s my first day on the job. This is the first time I’ve ever stepped onto a construction site. Now let’s say it’s your job to tell me everything I need to know to keep me safe—and you only have two minutes. What are you going to tell me?”

If workers start rushing through all the safety concerns or talking too fast, tell them to stop for a moment and regroup. After all, if it’s your first day on the job you’re going to need them to talk at a normal pace so that you can follow along and understand what they’re saying. Emphasize that the goal is to focus on the biggest hazards and most common-sense safety protocols—which, in a roundabout way, is exactly what this tailgate talk on construction safety is designed to do.

And if you’ve already done this toolbox talk once then try reversing it. Ask workers what they’d tell you if their goal was for you to be hurt as quickly as possible. It’s a novel question that’s likely to get their attention while still prompting your crew to consider hazards, processes and other key safety issues.

CONCLUSION

These eleven topics all make great options for construction toolbox talks. But there are plenty of others too, including working in confined spaces, hazardous chemicals, and sources of hazardous energy that are specific to your jobsite.

Whatever you choose to discuss in your construction safety talks, remember that you shouldn’t be teaching workers about any new concepts, procedures, or hazards. Instead, you should be offering a refresher about tools they’ll likely be using, processes they’ll need to navigate, and dangers they might encounter on the jobsite. Keep the focus on timely reminders and your construction toolbox talks will help keep your workers safer throughout their shift.

Manage Human Factors in Safety Management Systems With Three Key Techniques

12.04.2024 | EHS Today

Approaches to organizational safety have come a long way. Gone are the days when companies can hand out some hardhats, warn employees about a hazard in the workplace, and check the box for safety compliance.

Business leaders now recognize that safety management is a specialized field that requires insight, dedication and experience. And the safety professional spends their days ensuring EHS best practices are applied in a host of ways to prevent injuries and keep people safe. But just as safety management has evolved, so too has our collective understanding of what causes safety incidents in the first place. We still recognize the importance of wearing PPE and paying attention to environmental hazards and other dangers. However, we also understand that we need safety management systems that manage human factors just as well as they manage hazards and other ‘oldschool’ occupational health and safety issues.

Here’s a recently published white paper making the case for why it’s essential for organizations to attend to human factors in their safety management systems:

In the context of workplace safety, human factors management is an essential element to reducing incidents. In the past ten years, there has been a high volume of safety research and numerous advancements in safety management systems. And yet U.S. fatalities are up slightly at 3.5 per 100,000 workers, and non-fatal occupational injuries have been relatively static for 2006-2017 at roughly 2,800 per 100,000.1 Furthermore, the inclusion of human factors elements within revised standards such as ISO 45001, ANSI Z10 and NFPA 70E ensure that further emphasis will be expected within the safety profession in the coming months and years. This is a challenge that many companies are still in the midst of tackling. Human factors can be a tricky problem to solve, even if you already have a rigorous SMS in place. Here are three key ways for organizations to get a better structural change in managing human error.

UNDERSTAND HUMAN FACTORS MANAGEMENT AT A LEADERSHIP LEVEL

One of the fundamental concepts in human factors training is making sure that workers understand what they are and how they work. If you want people to better manage their own fatigue, they first have to understand why being tired is potentially dangerous.

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The same is true of managing human factors at an organizational level. Before you can start embedding human factors management principles in your existing safety systems, your safety and business leaders need to have a solid understanding of what they’re dealing with.

This means making sure the senior business managers have a good grasp of how human factors can circulate throughout an organization, increasing the risk of error and injuries in various ways.

It’s hard to make forward-thinking decisions about your safety management systems if members of the leadership group have an asymmetrical recognition of the impact that fatigue, frustration and other states can have on organizational performance.

The best way to get them all on the same page? Educate the entire leadership group at the same time. Obviously, there’s a huge opportunity cost to gathering senior business leaders together to learn about human factors. Fortunately, this need for efficacy is one of the core design influences in a program like SafeFactor.

In only a half-day, it’s able to get senior executives and operational managers up to speed on human factors, offering a practical understanding of how to identify gaps in organizational systems and improve trends in safety, employee engagement and production. Simply, it may be the most efficient way to ensure your entire leadership team recognizes the problem and can begin charting a course to potential solutions.

DOCUMENT HUMAN FACTORS IN THE SAFETY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Once there’s a high-level understanding of how human factors work, the next step is to develop a clear picture of how they operate in your specific organization. The goal here is to recognize where human error is most likely to occur so that you can make targeted improvements to your safety management system.

The best place to start is with a human factors framework that accounts for the various types of systems that make up your organization, as well as for the ways in which these systems interact with one another.

Why is a framework like this so valuable? To quote the safety white paper again:

[An] integrative framework will help organizations to better understand how human factors function in work environments. It can be deployed in a variety of live and training scenarios to help workers recognize how human factors function around them. As a result, lessons learned from using this framework allows organizations to manage human factors, and improve safety outcomes and worker reliability in the workplace.

It allows companies to recognize what is going on in their worksites while also providing a roadmap to developing a safety management system that better manages human factors. It is both a diagnostic tool and a goal post.

LEVERAGE HAPPINESS, ENGAGEMENT, AND CULTURE TO BETTER MANAGE HUMAN FACTORS

Several decades ago, Larry Wilson started sounding the alarm about the dangers of human factors in industrial safety. At the time, few people had a practical understanding of what human factors are. But after years of speaking about human error , many safety folks are now much more aware of the rushing, frustration, fatigue, and complacency. Think of them as The Big Four—the four mental and physical states that most commonly affect the risk of an incident occurring.

But while those four states might be the most well-known human factors, they are hardly the only ones. And recent research by New York Times-bestselling author Rodd Wagner has revealed another factor that has flown relatively under the radar: happiness.

As Wagner notes in his article “Why Happiness is the Secret Ingredient of Worker Safety ”:

[T]he data show less engaged people are, in fact, worse at self-preservation. Safety is not only positively correlated with engagement, it is one of the strongest connections between attitude and outcome. Something different, something deeper, something perhaps partially subconscious, is happening to make workers with lower morale more hazardous to themselves and their colleagues.

There is a direct link between worker happiness and workplace safety. As Wagner argues in his article, one way to make safer employees is to better engage them. And while engagement may seem like it has nothing to do with your safety management systems, it’s actually the exact opposite.

DOES YOUR SAFETY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM MANAGE HUMAN FACTORS?

As the human factors framework shows us, there is a strong two-way connection between individual performance and organizational outcomes. This is true with production metrics and it’s true with safety as well. The challenge facing EHS professionals is how to effectively deal with human factors using a safety management system.

Most companies already have an SMS in place as a cornerstone of their occupational health and safety program, and it’s a matter of embedding human factors within the existing system. Often, that requires beginning with a shared understanding among the management team about what human factors are and how they operate.

From there, a human factors framework can offer a robust yet flexible way to manage human error within a safety management system and throughout the entire organization. It’s valuable both as a way to diagnose ongoing problems as well as to target how you’d like your SMS to manage human factors in the future.

To that end, placing an emphasis on happiness and engagement metrics can lead to long-term success in mitigating the dangers of human factors. It can help you get employee buy-in for human factors training and

will make it easier for you to sustain the initial benefits of that training.

All of which is to say that managing human errors is no small feat, but it’s worth it to take these steps to leverage your current SMS properly. Doing so can make it much easier to turn what feels like an ad-hoc process into a sustainable and viable way to use existing safety systems to properly manage human factors.

Something, Say Something: Workplace Safety Hazard Reporting 12.10.2024 | Weeklysafety.com

See Something, Say Something is a simple and effective practice that significantly contributes to maintaining a safe working environment.

The See Something, Say Something approach is about encouraging workers to report any unsafe conditions , behaviors, or situations they observe.

Safety is a shared responsibility, and every employee has a role in maintaining a safe working environment.

• Shared responsibility ensures everyone contributes to safety.

• Collective vigilance prevents hazards from going unnoticed.

• Actively speaking up about hazards promotes a culture of safety.

• A safe working environment benefits all employees.

The main theme of See Something, Say Something is this: If you see a hazard or unsafe act then fix it, do something, or

report it, but do not ignore it. If you see an injury or incident occur, report it immediately.

If employees aren’t sure if they should report something, encourage them to be cautious and go ahead and report it! Small issues can lead to tragic consequences if they are not addressed promptly.

Proactive reporting fixes minor hazards that have the potential to cause significant property damage or critical injuries if they are left unchecked.

During safety meetings remind team members that they should report any hazards or unsafe conditions immediately. Being vigilant about identifying these issues can prevent accidents and injuries. Workers should speak up if they see hazards like:

• Wet floors, loose or uneven flooring, or other slip and trip hazards.

• Blocked emergency exits.

• Damaged tools or equipment.

• Poor lighting in walkways or work areas.

• Missing or damaged PPE.

• Unusual noises or smells.

• Missing or malfunctioning safety guards.

• Unstable scaffolding or ladders.

Employees should also be reporting unsafe acts and suspicious activities. Observing and reporting these behaviors can prevent potential security breaches, hazardous situations, or injuries. This could include scenes like unauthorized persons in restricted areas, co-workers ignoring safety protocols, or someone exhibiting distracted behavior which can very quickly lead to accidents and injuries.

Of course, the hazards and unsafe acts listed above are only examples and not a complete list. Encourage employees to think about their workplace or jobsite and consider all the potential hazards that may need to be reported.

When employees notice a hazard or unsafe act, they should use available reporting channels to notify the appropriate personnel. To report a hazard, workers may need to speak directly to a supervisor or manager, use a dedicated safety hotline, or fill out a hazard report form.

Knowing the reporting process ensures that workplace hazards are addressed promptly. Make sure new employees are trained on how to report hazards , incidents, and near misses and remind all team members regularly what these processes are and how they should be utilized.

Hazard reports should be specific and detailed. Employees should be providing the exact location of the hazard, a description of what was observed, and the time and date of the observation.

Providing the specific location helps in locating and addressing the hazard. Descriptions provide context for the severity and nature of the hazard. Time and date assist in tracking patterns or recurring issues. ...continued on next page

Immediately after a work-related injury or incident occurs workers should be trained to follow the company’s reporting procedure and quickly notify the appropriate personnel that an incident has occurred.

It’s important that all incidents are reported quickly to make sure that anyone who may be injured has the opportunity to receive the medical care they need, and the company can respond effectively to ensure the hazard is fixed before anyone else gets hurt.

Workers should take action if they come across a hazard that can be fixed easily and safely. This might include simple solutions like:

• Moving a trip hazard out of the way.

• Cleaning up a minor spill.

• Removing clutter from walkways.

• Picking up and disposing of trash or debris.

• Securing loose cables or cords.

• Alerting someone if it seems like they are distracted.

• Moving tools or objects that are a falling object hazard.

• Closing drawers or cabinet doors that have been left open.

It’s important that workers take quick action if there is an immediate threat or situation that requires a fast response. This might involve evacuating the area, using a fire extinguisher, or administering first aid.

Alerting others to the danger helps ensure everyone’s safety. Evacuation ensures safety from dangerous situations.

Using a fire extinguisher can control small fires and prevent them from spreading. (Employees should only use a fire extinguisher if they are trained and confident; otherwise, they should evacuate the area.)

First aid (by trained individuals) can stabilize injured individuals until professional help arrives.

Promote a culture of safety by encouraging workers and new employees to adopt the “See Something, Say Something” mindset. This is particularly successful because leading by example sets a standard for others to follow.

Early adoption of safety practices ensures new employees understand their importance. Training new employees on reporting methods prevents future hazards. Integrating new employees into the safety culture maintains consistency.

If everyone is fixing or reporting hazards , then others don’t have to guess if it’s appropriate to do so because it just becomes part of the positive safety culture on the job.

By actively engaging in continuous improvement and fostering a proactive safety culture, employees will contribute to a safer and more efficient work environment for everyone.

Final thoughts that are helpful to share with employees during a safety meeting:

1. Participate in safety training sessions and drills that become available in order to stay prepared.

2. Share any new hazards you identify with your team to raise awareness.

3. Suggest practical solutions for recurring safety issues during team meetings.

4. Collaborate with co-workers to ensure that everyone is adhering to safety procedures and supporting each other to maintain a safe place to work.

SOMETHING, See

Why Happiness is the Secret Ingredient of Worker Safety

12.04.2024 | EHS Today

• Safety is one of the most reliable outcomes of employee engagement, which is really worker happiness in disguise. Happy employees are better at keeping themselves and their colleagues out of harm’s way for reasons both conscious and subconscious. Six aspects serve as examples of the mechanisms that translate happiness into incidents prevented.

• The kinds of personalized approaches that make a person happy on the job also make it more likely an attentive manager will recognize one of his or her employees is having a bad—and therefore dangerous—day.

• Adequate levels of sleep are the foundation of both one’s outlook on life and the risk of making the kinds of errors that lead to accidents.

• All safety programs anticipate employees will speak up if they see something hazardous. The willingness to call out issues is synonymous with employees feeling they have a voice in facility decisions, which is an important component of job satisfaction.

• Human connections are one of the most important elements of a happy life. In an industrial environment, those bonds help members of a crew spot hazards for each other and keep themselves out of harm’s way.

• Compensation may not seem like a safety issue, but when workers unhappy with their pay find more money (and happiness) somewhere else, they leave behind a worksite that must work short-staffed or with a higher proportion of less experienced employees.

• Mindfulness—an awareness of one’s current situation—is considered central to happiness. Few leaders recognize how much mindfulness overlaps with the state of selfawareness and situational awareness. A person who has learned to navigate through their day experiencing it more completely, in a way that makes them happy, is also someone more likely to see and avoid hazards along the way.

Those who have watched enough Sesame Street will recall a jingle it uses to teach kids how to spot anomalies.

“One of these things is not like the others,” it goes. “One of these things just doesn’t belong.”

Red balloon. Red balloon. Blue balloon. Red balloon. Apple. Mitten. Ice cream cone. Hamburger.

Flamingo. Airplane. Cow. Bee.

Spend enough time looking at how employee engagement drives performance and that Sesame Street earworm will return.

• Engage employees and they will be less likely to call in sick, which they do 81 percent less often in topquartile workgroups.

• Look after employees and they will sell more and produce more, which account for increases of 18 and 14 percent, respectively.

• Maintain morale and employees will prevent product defects, something they manage to reduce by 41 percent.

• Energize workers and they will manage to avoid 64 percent of the accidents suffered by their lessengaged counterparts.

• Ensure workers are well managed and they will be less apt to resign, which they do 18 to 43 percent less often in top-quartile teams than they do in bottomquartile workgroups.

That last statistic is not like the others. It doesn’t belong.

That last statistic is not like the others. It doesn’t belong. Think of engagement as paddling a canoe. An engaged worker paddles forcefully in concert with the rest of the crew to move the team forward. A frustrated or demoralized worker doesn’t paddle as hard or jumps out and swims to shore. It’s in this slowing down or leaving that safety shows itself as the blue balloon, the mitten, or the cow of worker psychology.

• Underpaid? “I quit.”

• Being overworked? “I’m taking a ‘mental health day.’”

• Management doesn’t supply the right tools? “Defect rates are not my problem.”

• Seeing no future in the job? “Maybe I’ll lose a few fingers in the machinery today.”

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That safety example doesn’t make sense. What sane person would get injured because he hates his job? All employees— whether energized or demoralized—want to avoid getting injured or killed on the job.

Before being exposed to the statistical connection between morale and safety, one might even argue it’s common sense that the most frustrated employees would be the safest because they would push themselves less, slow down, and better look out for themselves, just as they act out of selfinterest in absenteeism, productivity, and resignations. The reality is the type of counterintuitive truth discussed by Duncan J. Watts in his book Everything is Obvious* (*Once You Know the Answer).

WHY ENGAGEMENT STUDIES ARE REALLY ABOUT HAPPINESS

One of the biggest reasons happiness is the secret ingredient in worker safety is that most of the research calls it something else. The analyses cited above connect better safety to higher “employee engagement,” not greater happiness. Shouldn’t engagement then be the goal? The answer to that question first requires an understanding of both concepts.

“The first problem with common sense is that when trying to explain someone’s behavior, or to anticipate it, we focus on certain conscious motives and incentives that are most obviously relevant,” wrote Watts. “In doing so, however, we ignore a multitude of other possibly relevant factors, many of which operate below the level of consciousness. Thus, while it is true that people respond to incentives—somehow—this insight tells us little more than that ‘people have reasons for doing what they do.’ It doesn’t tell us either what they will do or what reasons they will have for doing it. Once we have observed their behavior, the explanation for it will seem obvious, but this ex-post obviousness is deeply misleading.”

As is not obvious, the data show less engaged people are, in fact, worse at self-preservation. Safety is not only positively correlated with engagement, it is one of the strongest connections between attitude and outcome. Something different, something deeper, something perhaps partially subconscious, is happening to make workers with lower morale more hazardous to themselves and their colleagues. Cracking the code on that phenomenon reveals the secret ingredient of worker safety.

Engagement is a business term first coined in 1990 by Boston University professor William Kahn. It is, he wrote in the Academy of Management Journal, an employee’s dedication to the job, “the harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles,” how much they “employ and express themselves physically, cognitively and emotionally” on the job. Company leaders took to the terminology because it sounds productive, if not downright mechanical, like a gear working within a larger machine. Engagement is easier to justify as part of a business plan than happiness, especially when the majority of the research frames the results in terms of engagement. Happiness sounds less like a business imperative—too fuzzy or even frivolous.

For that reason, many engagement firms take a dim view of happiness. “The idea of trying to make people happy at work is terrible,” said Jim Clifton, the CEO of Gallup. A report from his organization compared employees to bears in Yellowstone National Park whose “natural instincts” are fouled up if they get a taste of human food. “Once the bears taste a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, they quit digging for roots and catching deer,” it said. “Don’t feed the bears.”

But the working definition of happiness—the kind enshrined in the United States Declaration of Independence and

the type that’s measured when SafeStart asks people about their happiness on the job—is a solidly productive emotion. It is “not about yellow smiley faces, self-esteem or even feelings,” wrote Jon Meacham, author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. “It was an ultimate good, worth seeking for its own sake. Given the Aristotelian insight that man is a social creature whose life finds meaning in his relation to other human beings, Jeffersonian eudaimonia— the Greek word for happiness—evokes virtue, good conduct and generous citizenship.”

In besmirching happiness on the job, some consultants and business leaders prefer to treat it as a condition wholly separate from and inferior to engagement. “Engagement isn’t about being happy. Happy people may or may not be engaged in the business,” asserted Jim Whitehurst, then CEO of Red Hat, in a 2016 Harvard Business Review article.

“Someone can be happy at work, but not ‘engaged,’” wrote engagement author Kevin Kruse . “They might be happy because they are lazy and it’s a job with not much to do. They might be happy talking to all their work-friends and enjoying the free cafeteria food. They might be happy to have a free company car. They might just be a happy person. But just because they’re happy doesn’t mean they are working hard on behalf of the company. They can be happy and unproductive.”

SOMEONE CAN BE HAPPY AT WORK, BUT NOT ‘ENGAGED’.

In fact, happiness and workplace engagement are neither separate from nor antagonistic to each other. They run in parallel. When, before signing on with SafeStart, I was the workplace research practice leader at BI Worldwide, we decided to empirically test the question of whether workers could be happy at work but not engaged. We asked people, “How happy are you at work?” with a 100-point slider and followed up that query with 36 more traditional engagement questions about aspects such as pay, worklife balance , meaning, teamwork, and professional growth. The correlation between job happiness and engagement was an exceptionally high 0.77.

“The overlap between those who are happy and those who are engaged is so large that there simply are no appreciable numbers of people who are happy at work and not engaged, or, conversely, engaged and not happy,” my colleague Amy Stern and I concluded. “In the vast majority of cases, engaged employees are happy,

and happy employees are engaged.”

Countering consultants’ assertions that happiness is a poor gauge, the BIW study found that happy employees are far more likely to feel obligated “to work as hard as I can for my organization,” to be innovative, and are much less likely to plan on resigning, among other outcomes.

ISO 45003 recognizes the happiness-safety connection by focusing on the potential consequences of making employees unhappy, what it terms “psychosocial risks.” “It is important,” states the standards document, “that psychosocial risks are managed in a manner consistent with other (occupational health and safety) risks, through an OH&S management system, and integrated into the organization’s broader business processes.” Employee wellbeing, it asserts, depends on the “fulfilment of the physical, mental, social and cognitive needs and expectations of a worker related to their work.”

Correlations between engagement and “satisfaction,” a less intense form of job happiness, run as high as 0.91 even in Gallup’s own analyses, making them “virtually identical.” In fact, some social scientists question whether the concept of employee engagement adds anything to the mix. Given it’s a relatively new label put on ages-old human phenomena, it may be nothing more than “old wine in new bottles.”

There is no standard or universally accepted definition of employee engagement. Kahn’s reference to emotional commitment and the level of physical and mental work fit

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the subsequent research. In its simplest form, engagement is the intensity employees deliver at work in reciprocation for the investments their companies make in their experience at work.

The logic is straightforward: If “engaged” employees are far safer, and engagement and happiness are “virtually identical,” happy employees are safer employees. In SafeStart’s surveys for clients, the connection is even clearer: The happier an employee is at work, the less he or she feels at risk of an accident.

PUTTING HAPPINESS AT THE CENTER OF THE COMPANY STRATEGY

The strong statistical connection between happiness and safety is sufficiently compelling to inspire a company’s guiding philosophy. There is nothing wrong—and quite a bit right—with senior leaders saying, “We aim to make our employees happy, both because it’s the right thing to do and it improves our performance.” It’s an essential overarching intention, a worthy gauge against which tactics can be judged.

But by itself, it runs the risk of being nebulous. “Make them happy and they’ll be safe” or “Improve morale and accidents will go down”—although true—are not enough. Translating that solid philosophy into a low-incident reality requires an understanding of at least some of the likely mechanisms behind the phenomenon. It requires an operational strategy built on that psychological wiring. Leaders and frontline managers need to understand how their decisions and actions affect their teams and how they translate into lower risk.

I am not necessarily arguing for a direct cause-and-effect relationship, that happiness per se makes people safer, although it probably does. What the data strongly indicate is that many of the conditions that make people happy also make them safe. Some of those effects are conscious decisions, such as complying with safety protocols. Others, such as intense situational awareness, may be less deliberate, less obvious, making the safety connection “not like the others.”

From a practical perspective, it doesn’t matter whether the pattern is linear (certain job conditions create happiness, which reduces accidents) or the result of dual pathways (certain job conditions simultaneously create happiness and better safety). In either case, an enlightened leader will put his or her employees’ psychological wellbeing at the center of the strategic plan.

Below are six aspects of an organization’s culture where the conditions that make a person happy on and off the job have a demonstrated effect on the number and severity of accidents. They are not the only mechanisms, but emerge as some of the most compelling and important. In combination, they are more than enough to make the case of making worker happiness the centerpiece of a safety strategy.

INDIVIDUALIZATION

Patterns in employee engagement are most easily discerned by analyzing group data. This unavoidably creates generalizations—connections that are true for many in the group, but not true for all. I summarized the issue in my most recent book, Widgets:

“Employee engagement is an individual phenomenon. Every person’s motivations, abilities, and goals are unique. Each person’s reasons for needing or wanting to work differ. Everything needs to be adapted to the circumstances and personality of the individual worker. The most important imperative to prevent employees from being treated like widgets is to ensure each is led and managed in a way that fits his or her personality. That can happen only if someone takes the time to really decipher that employee, to get inside his or her head.”

“Getting inside someone’s head” is crucial to their happiness. Statements such as “My manager understands me,” “My manager makes decisions with my best interest in mind,” and “My manager divides work among our team according to employees’ abilities” all correlate with people’s happiness on the job. Nearly every study of engagement and job happiness has demonstrated the key role played by frontline managers, those in authority in the best position to adapt general company programs into personalized approaches.

Individualization is also crucial to worker safety. The recognition in recent years that women’s personal protective equipment can’t simply be “one size smaller” is a case in point. “Besides being uncomfortable and sometimes even clownish-looking, ill-fitting PPE is a safety hazard,” concluded a 2020 column in Safety+Health. “The oversized safety shirts and jackets issued to women can be cumbersome, especially with excess fabric at the sleeves that can get caught in machinery. The fit is often too blocky and clumsy, and can interfere with the use of tools and operation of equipment.”

An attentive manager also recognizes when a worker seems tired or distracted, how fast or through what methods she or he learns best, what she or he needs to watch out for

during the coming shift, and how to match tasks to abilities. All these types of individualization make a person happier. They also make a person safer.

SLEEP

There are few areas that so clearly affect happiness as sleep.

Running parallel are a host of studies that indicate the risk of accidents increases substantially when a person is low on sleep. One of the best studies on that increased risk was conducted in 2016 by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. If the baseline accident risk after a proper seven-plus hours of sleep is set to 1.0, the accident risk rises to 1.3 (30 percent greater) between six and seven hours, to 1.9 (90 percent greater) between five and six hours, to 4.3 (330 percent greater) between four and five hours, and to 11.5 (1,050 percent higher) below four hours.

Adequate sleep makes people happier. It also makes them much safer.

A REAL VOICE

One of the building blocks of engagement and job happiness is what’s called “employee voice” in the research literature. It is the degree to which a worker feels his or her perspective is incorporated into how the organization is managed. It’s measured on nearly every employee survey by a statement along the lines of how much people feel their “opinions count.” SafeStart asks a more pointed question about whether “the company is always asking employees for their input on how to improve safety.”

“Poor sleep predicted a consistent pattern of life dissatisfaction,” concluded one study of identical twins in Finland. “Both positive affect and eudaimonic wellbeing are directly associated with good sleep,” determined another. “Those who sleep well are more satisfied with life,” found yet another.

“No matter how active and vigorous and successful we are during our wakeful hours, if we don’t obtain an adequate amount of sleep, we’ll suffer in terms of our moods, energy, alertness, longevity, and health,” wrote Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky in her book The How of Happiness.

SafeStart’s client studies show a similar pattern. Those who agree or strongly agree “Work-life balance here allows me to get enough sleep” report that their time in bed between shifts is typically seven to seven-and-a-half hours. Those who disagree or strongly disagree are getting six hours or less. And their sleep levels correlate strongly with their agreement with the statement, “I’m happy with my job.”

One study concluded, consistent with the broader body of research, that “employees who perceive themselves as speaking up with opinions and suggestions are more likely to be engaged with their work. Moreover, the results show that trust in management and, to a lesser extent, the employee–frontline management relationship are important in achieving this outcome.”

The link between voice and safety is both logical and empirical. A worker who feels the company doesn’t care about his views is likely to hold his tongue more often, even when seeing a potentially hazardous situation such as a loose railing, spill, or machine needing repair. Conversely, the sense of responsibility or psychological “ownership” for which leaders so often hope is the natural consequence of a workforce that believes their perspectives are important to decision-makers and frontline managers.

Accident-prone teams focus more on internal processes, while the safer teams emphasize “human relations,” concluded a 2012 study of workers in high-risk workplaces in Australia. “A lack of perceived control on the part of employees is known to adversely affect morale and limit

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the desire for learning and development. The overall effect may be to encourage the development of a passive orientation to safety, in which responsibility for safety is seen as part of someone else’s role, and adaptivity and proactivity are not encouraged.”23 This is the reason SafeStart asks its clients’ employees whether “My manager explains the reasons behind our safety procedures rather than simply enforcing the rules.” Those who answer positively are less likely to say they feel at risk on the job.

Analyses of SafeStart client surveys show high correlations between how much employees see their leadership team asking for their input, their happiness on the job, and their response to the statement, “I feel comfortable reporting unsafe situations, near misses, or close calls without fear of retaliation.”

Believing one has a real voice in how work is done makes a worker happier. It also makes his or her coworkers safer.

COLLABORATION

autonomy, good coworkers—is “the most consistent job resource in terms of explaining variance in burnout, engagement, and safety outcomes.” Burnout, the analysts concluded, is “significantly related to accidents and injuries.”

Higher levels of collaboration make employees happy. That teamwork also arms them to fend off accidents.

PAY AND BENEFITS

Compensation may not seem to have a connection to safety for the same reason mentioned earlier that it’s illogical for less happy people to get hurt more often. Why would a person paid less be more likely to get hurt?

A MINDFUL PERSON IS HAPPIER. A MINDFUL PERSON IS ALSO SAFER.

Isolation makes people miserable. One study concluded it poses dangers as serious as cigarette smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity, or lack of exercise. Humans are naturally social creatures and need partnerships and friendships on the job to be happy there.

As Dr. Gale Muller and I observed in our book, Power of 2, “The more good partnerships you have in your life, the more likely you are to say that you experienced the feeling of enjoyment much of the day yesterday, that you recently learned something interesting, and that you’ve been doing a lot of smiling and laughing — all key measures of your happiness. Even having one strong partnership markedly increases your wellbeing over those who have none.”

Safety is often a team sport, whether it’s one person steadying the ladder another is climbing, two pilots talking through what they see on a plane’s instruments, or one electrician labeling his work so another who follows knows what’s been done. Simple failures to coordinate or to notice something, which may mean nothing in an office environment, can be fatal in a hazardous one.

The safety research proves the old saying that two heads are better than one. Strong collaboration saves fingers, eyesight, and lives. A 2011 metaanalysis of 203 separate studies totaling 186,440 employees found that a “supportive” work environment—trustworthy leadership,

Compensation’s effect on accidents is further upstream than many other elements. In the current worker shortage, SafeStart often sees client tenure graphs with a high concentration of employees on the left side, those who have been with the company less than a year. Just as demand for many products surges, the socalled “Great Resignation” drew away large numbers of many companies’ experienced workers elsewhere for higher pay and better benefits. They were unhappy with the bargain, and they left.

In their wake, one of two things happened: Either those people were replaced with new hires who were unfamiliar with the processes, equipment, and hazards; or their former colleagues were required to pick up extra hours or work shorthanded. Both situations are inherently more dangerous than if the turnover had not occurred. One of the most common hazards revealed by SafeStart’s worker surveys are high proportions agreeing “People here sometimes feel pressure to keep working when they lack the right knowledge or sufficient experience.” The more strongly they agree, the more they fear a future accident.

Compensation will never appear as a root cause of an accident. The proximate issues such as insufficient training, fatigue , or poor maintenance will appear on the reports. It is nonetheless true that many incidents would not occur if companies paid their workers enough to keep them happy, keep them and their “institutional knowledge” inside the plant, and thereby prevent many accidents.

MINDFULNESS

The speed of business today is disorienting. The pace of production, texts, alerts, and the hundreds of distractions on a smartphone can make it difficult to maintain a normal stream of consciousness. The unending string of distractions

can be mentally fatiguing and ultimately make a person unhappy on the job.

It’s not surprising, therefore, that many company wellbeing programs include options to improve one’s mindfulness. Highly mindful people “are models of flourishing and positive mental health,” wrote Dr. Lyubomirsky. Relative to the average person, they are more likely to be happy, optimistic, self-confident, and satisfied with their lives and less likely to be depressed, angry, anxious, hostile, selfconscious, impulsive, or neurotic.” Employees who fit the former description would logically outperform those in the latter category in retention, customer focus, productivity, and creativity.

But there is no situation where mindfulness—Dr. Lyubomirsky defines it as “attentive to the here and now and keenly aware of their surroundings” —is more important than in a hazardous environment. This, in fact, lies at the heart of SafeStart’s training of frontline workers in situational awareness and self-awareness. Consciousness of one’s mental state, especially those states that can lead to critical errors in the presence of high energy, can literally mean the difference between life and death.

A mindful person is happier. A mindful person is also safer.

THE POWER OF RECIPROCITY

The reason happiness and engagement correlate so highly is because they are corresponding sides of a solid social contract. The enterprise wants engagement (evidenced by enthusiasm for the job, teamwork, dedication to the enterprise mission, customer focus, care for company resources, for example); the employee wants happiness (in the form of salary and bonuses, health care, adequate time off, credentials, and personalized attention, among other benefits).

The ultimate reason to focus on happiness rather than engagement is because it better creates a two-sided bargain, unleashing the power of human reciprocity. Employees who most forcefully agree with the statement, “My employer is trying to make me happy” are most inclined to look out for that employer’s interests. An organization that focuses too much on its own goals (engagement and the attendant business outcomes) risks alienating its workforce. An enterprise that methodically determines what its employees want from their time there

(sometimes called the “employee value proposition” or “employee experience”) and delivers on those expectations creates the motivation that fuels those higher levels of performance.

In a 2012 CNN interview , safety leadership legend and former Alcoa CEO Paul O’Neill called it “discretionary energy” delivered when employees are “treated with dignity and respect every day… A down payment on that is nobody ever gets hurt here, because we care about our own commitment to our safety, and we care about the people we work with. And it swells up into everything you do, so it creates the sense of pride about the organization you’re involved in.”

Happiness creates far more than these six pathways to higher safety outlined here. It sparks innovation, making manufacturing processes simpler and safer. It creates greater trust in leaders, greater belief that safety really does come before production, and therefore greater willingness to hit stop before a serious break. It feeds the willingness to comply with safety protocols rather than disregard what the company has requested. And overall, it leads to people, who of course don’t want to get hurt, through dozens of difficult-to-document causal connections, being better at actually avoiding the catastrophic.

Because of its unique and sometimes counterintuitive power to keep people safe, happiness is, indeed, not like the other effects of high morale. But as the central strategy for motivating a safe workforce, it most definitely belongs.

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