When you talk about workplace safety you have most likely heard some of the above statements (maybe even said one or two?). These are some of the biggest myths of workplace safety.

Lets be realistic—most of the time we go through our day, do our job and go home at night in relatively the same condition that we left home in the morning. If we can do that, we must be doing something right. RIGHT?

The problem is that some of us don’t come home in the same condition we left. Some of us don’t come home at all. According to National Safety Council, over 5000 people did not return from work in 2000 due to workplace fatalities. That is not counting the people who will be disabled, hospitalized, or just plain hurt! Part of the problem is safety is a probability- based system. Let’s compare it to; cigarette smoking.

Can I say that smoking will definitely lead to emphysema or lung cancer, no. Can I say it is a lot more likely, yes. If we carry that analogy over, let’s say that every day you come into work you roll six dice. You’re fine anytime the dice comes up as anything but all ones. The day you get all ones, you get hurt. Improving workplace safety is like saying, “now just roll every other day to see if you get hurt” or roll eight dice instead of six. You are affecting the probability, making it less and less likely someone will get hurt.

OK, so if we want to lower probably, how do we do it? We have two simple places to start: fix problems (conditions) and don’t take chances (actions). What is meant by fix problems? Repair the items that are broken where we work. That’s easy, right? Not always. Haven’t we all had a problem (hole or depression in the floor, open electrical box, cracked mirror on the car) that wasn’t fixed (or fixed in a timely manner) because it was a pain? In the safety profession we call that an unsafe condition. That unsafe condition can be anything physical from a broken machine to an improper tool. The conditions can be some of the easiest items to fix--Maintain, Repair, and obtain the equipment and tools needed to do the job safely!

Taking chances, or what the safety profession calls unsafe behavior, can be harder to fix. Let’s be realistic, Americans like to take chances. History is full of people who took a chance and came out ahead. Unfortunately it doesn’t talk much about the people who took a chance and failed. Once we start believing that when you do a job over and over, you know it well enough not to follow procedures all the time. We are taking a risk. We try to justify the attitude that procedures are made for the people who don’t know what they are doing. Or maybe it’s just that we are in a rush; we can do the job in half the time by not following procedures. Sometimes we want to follow procedures, but the procedures aren’t very good and we can’t do the job and follow the procedure, it’s one or the other.

The problem is that with all of the above reasons (or excuses), at some point someone will pay the price for their mis-beliefs. Unsafe acts have led to a lot of people’s pain. The easy answers are to make sure work procedures/polices/processes are safe and workable. Assure that your program will work out in the shop and not just on paper. Train people so they realize why the procedures are there and finally take the time to point out when people are working safely and help the people who aren’t.

Workplace safety has a number of myths tied to it, but having ...a good workplace safety program will save the company money and employees pain and trips to the emergency room— and that’s no myth.

by: William R. Coffey CSP, CPEA