Safety Hazard Judgment Developed Through Visual Reminders
Posted: Saturday, August 28, 2010
by Thomas Yoon
Cartoon Web Services
Focusing on the real world, most likely situations that people will face has brought the safety awareness of employees in one company to a whole new level of safety behavior.
Very often, people who want to promote safety at their work place are at a loss when it comes to giving safety training or presentations. The materials that they have are often plugged from sources that are remote or are foreign to them. There is no doubt that many of the safety concerns are quite similar and that whatever is true in one place is also true in another.
Putting up training without considering the situations that will arise is like shooting in the dark. The result is a futile, non-meaningful exercise that is a waste of everybody's time and resources. The poor listeners become bored because they can recognize that the situations described are not applicable to them. If the presentation skills of the trainer is poor, and the training period drags on for hours, it will be extremely boring for the listeners.
In preparing for a safety communication or training, a better way is to focus on the real world most likely encountered situations the listeners will face. This means customizing the information to suit the workers.
This means identifying hazards wherever they are expected to occur for the particular type of work the workers do with a view to eliminating the hazards. This means also that much thought has to be given to understanding the nature of the work and what each task involves.
Reminders of slip and fall hazards, driving hazards, extreme temperatures or dangerous environmental hazards will be targeted for the outdoor workers and not to workers who spend most of their time in the office. And these outdoor workers can further be sub-categorized into forklift drivers, building maintenance technicians, waste treatment operators, long distance drivers and so on and their particular work areas. For indoor workers, there will be another type of reminders of hazards, some of which could be just as hazardous.
These reminders will be very useful if they are readily available visually at the places where the risks are highest. Safety signs and posters are particularly helpful in these areas. The visual effect tells the tale.
Keeping it real means helping the workers to make the right decisions. Initially, there should be a basic safety training to help them understand the various hazards that they will encounter in their everyday working environment. This should be supplemented by real world situation reminders that are readily available in the form of visuals posted all over the place that they simply could not avoid seeing.
Visuals have a very special role to play as reminders. Visuals that are colorful and appealing are especially effective for drawing attention to a particular situation. Posters come into mind when we talk about visuals. However, we don't have to confine ourselves to posters only in our quest for delivering safety messages to those we intended them for. Many safety messages can be effectively delivered through printed T-shirts, mugs, badges, buttons, framed pictures, souvenirs, gifts, and other means. Attractive flyers of safety cartoons printed on pieces of paper are often appreciated and are known to travel on their own, copied and distributed through the efforts of others.
Another advantage that these visual pieces of safety reminders have is that unlike the old boring presentation that goes in through one ear of a listener and goes out through the other ear, these kinds of reminders remain in place for a very, very long time, silently doing their job, 24/7.
Many real world hazards do not result in accidents, but have resulted in near misses. However, there is a strong possibility that these near misses could one day result in accidents if they were not addressed. A good safety program will try to eliminate near misses too.
However, very often, workers are quite reluctant to discuss about these near misses because these could jeopardize their safety track record and result in the workers being labeled as accident prone individuals.
In order for this to work, the employer must have a culture of genuine concern for the safety of workers as a whole and not to find fault with them. There must be open communication. Workers must be able to talk frankly with their managers, whose role are to decide if others will benefit from the near miss experience. The management must do their part and take the necessary action on the feedback of their workers to avoid accident situations.
Very often, accident situations are few and sometimes difficult to imagine for many workers. This is where visual reminders, especially cartoon illustrated ones are the favorites. Accident situations, impossible to photograph or described in real life, can be readily posted up in places where it matters. It may make a difference between life and death and management has to do their part.
Thomas Yoon specializes in cartoon illustrations that will make an impact on people's opinions. Subscribe to TechMarketing Ezine. More information on engineering at Marine and M & E Engineer.
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