Hi, Bryan McWhorter here with Safeopedia and another safety moment.
In one of my last safety moments, I talked about the importance of doing safety walks. Something that goes along really well with this is just safety observation.
If I am being brought to a site to help drive safety, one of the first things I'll do, and I actually learned this from 'Lean' methodology, the Toyota production system and production systems like that where observation is so important to see what is truly going on, to go from theory to reality.
So I'll walk around whatever work environment that I'm dealing with and just observe the employees, and observe the culture and the environment. If employees are regularly using their PPE, if they're following safe work habits, then I can go with the assumption that safety is important, is valued, and they have a bit of a safety culture here.
But if I'm out there and I'm noticing people are working unsafe, not wearing their PPE, using tools that maybe they shouldn't be using where there's say a power cord that was frayed or they're in an environment with slip and trip hazards and people tend to disregard it. That tells me that accidents are more likely. That they don't really have a safety culture.
We're creatures of habit and we're incredibly adaptable. So if safety is not driven, we will adapt to that unsafe condition and it'll just become our normal. We won't think twice about it. And I've seen this where people work around spills without cleaning them up. Work around trip hazards and this is just normal. Again, we're creatures of habit. We need to instill a sense of urgency and make sure that again, safety is truly important.
So if you were to go out and just observe your work environment, would you catch people doing good safety habits following good rules and procedures? Again, we're creatures of habit. If you saw someone put on their gloves and doing things the right away, then most likely that's their habit. If you see someone who disregards safety, then most likely that's their habit.
So again, safety observations and safety walks should be part of your normal safety management system.
Until next time, Bryan McWhorter with Safeopedia. Stay safe.