Within your organization, you have great policies, training programs, safety incentives and personal protective equipment. However, you still have incidents and injuries. Why?

The truth is, regardless of the environment, training, and tools that we provide to our employees and leaders, they are ultimately the ones who must calculate risks and decide whether they are acceptable. While everyone can be trained on safe work practices, individuals exhibit many differences in how they respond to certain situations, depending on their unique experiences, traits, abilities, and attitudes related to safety. Most at-risk behaviors occur intuitively and are the result of experientially-based feelings associated with anticipated outcomes. The role of feelings and emotions is becoming increasingly important as a primary source of motivation for taking the risk.

This also explains why younger workers have more accidents than older workers. The younger worker doesn’t have the experience level and is more apt to break the rules than seasoned workers whose longer life experience has made them safer in their actions.

What motivates your employees to choose risky behavior versus a safer alternative? Are they even aware that they are making these decisions? Safety meetings become more important and the way they are delivered to the audience needs to be examined so that the message sinks in.

Here is a video, Accident Cascade, that addresses this topic.

Washington Retail employs Rick Means as a Safety Specialist who is available to members to help draw up safety plans and suggest topics for safety meetings. Contact him at 360-943-9198, Ext. 118 or [email protected].