I’m fortunate to be working at a manufacturing company with an excellent safety program and record. Milestone achievements are rapidly approaching six million labor hours worked without a lost time accident.
Safety tip #1: use only the best cardboard for a welding mask
Apart from the obvious morale benefits of having a safe workplace, ensuring that employees work in a safe environment, the obsessive focus on safe practices has a direct impact to the bottom line line, as our workman’s compensation costs per labor hour worked are a mere fraction of the industry average.
Why does this mean from a personal finance perspective? Just as a private large company such as ours will be obsessive about safety measures, only because they impact the bottom line so significantly, you should also be in your personal life.
Safe driving practices get a disproportionate amount of attention, and deservedly so, only because it is the single most dangerous thing we do *every* day. Don’t text and drive, and don’t decide you need a quickie in the middle of the highway (like these double Darwin award winners), and don’t stuff your face with a double cheeseburger while whizzing by at 75 mph in the fast lane. But this is common sense, and most people know this. The ones that don’t are rapidly culled from the herd, Darwin-award-style.
What’ll getcha most often is the mundane.
Nothing like sinking an inch-long wood splinter deep into the base of your thumb to drive home the point of work gloves (pun entirely intended).
Nothing like having a metal shaving fly past your regular eyeglasses and into the corner of your eye while using a Dremel rotary tool, to remind you that you either need side shields, or bigger safety glasses.
Safety tip #2: wear adequate eye protection
Nothing like losing 10% of your higher range hearing from all those bitchin’ concerts you went to in your youth – without hearing protection, right close up to the stage speakers. Just ask Pete Townsend of the Who. Oh, wait, you can’t ask Pete Townsend because he don’t hear too good no more.
The awareness on safety that we have at work, for carries over into safer work practices in the home.
Safety is almost an unconscious, reflexive state of mind. All those pages and pages on each instruction manual for leaf trimmers and lawn mowers are there for a reason, because some guy had a brain fart and stood up on a riding lawn mower going uphill (“I didn’t even realize the mower had run over my foot until I got up and tried running after the mower to turn it off.”)
Besides the obvious precautions when operating power tools, from lawn mowers to power saws, a good safety practice is to have lots of eyes, ears, hands and feet. By this I mean having multiple pieces of safety equipment at various places in your home, like safety glasses and work gloves.
I keep several pairs of safety glasses at various points in house. There are few hanging up at my workbench, one pair in every tool box, and a couple in the shed in the back yard. Partly because I just seem to collect, but mostly because I don’t want to be looking around for a pair when they’re needed, either for me or for whoever’s working with me.
The same goes for ear protection when operating any piece of equipment that puts out heavy decibels. Use of hearing protection will reduce the danger hearing loss, and incidentally, an iPod cranked up to the max to get over the lawnmower noise doesn’t really count as hearing protection.
Safety tip #3: be aware of falling objects
This probably goes against the minimalist lifestyle espoused by some PF bloggers, but I’d rather have some redundancy than risk an eyeball or two.
So, while lots of ink gets spilled on passive safety measures around the house, such as guarding against slips and falls by having a shower/tub mat and taping down rug edges, having working fire extinguishers, and having GFCI outlets in wet areas (all necessary measures), this is a little more active approach to personal safety, making sure that you’re carrying personal protective measures while engaging in potentially dangerous activity.
One more though on mowing lawns. This summer, make mental notes every time you see an ugly naked neighbor mowing the lawn (there’s always one in every neighborhood, an extravagantly-wrinkled shorts-only-clad septuagenarian, with his gut hanging out, out there doing his thing). Check and see if he’s wearing safety glasses, gloves or hearing protection. Chances are good that he’s not, nor will 90 percent of people you see out there doing yard work.
The goal of a good safety program is the prevention of accidents. For a manufacturing company, accidents mean increased workman’s compensation costs, higher insurance rates, dangers of willful negligence lawsuits, and other costs.
In personal life, accidents will mean damage to your most important income-producing asset, your body. An ounce of prevention is really worth a pound of cure.
PS, I may have included humorous captions under each of the three pictures, but I commend those workers for taking precautions, such as they are. There’s certainly making do with what they have at hand, so no disrespect is intended. I’ve visited many workshops and construction sites overseas in developing countries, and while awareness of good HS&E practices is increasing, for every major project where good practices are followed, there are hundreds and thousands where workers are at severe risk. I’m guessing that the photo of the worker with the cutting tool with his face in plastic wrap comes from one of India’s infamous ship breaking yards. You can read about them here, and here.
Excellent post 101c! A lax attitude when it comes safety can prove very costly – just ask BP!
Loved the pictures!
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Hi MC – Lack of safety always costs money – although I don’t know if that or faulty engineering was the case in the BP spill – probably both.
Safety First! I only have one safety goggle and I always use it when there are any flying bits around. Great pictures, where did you find them?
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RB40, I’ve had those pictures a while, got them in an email from a colleague in the middle of an ongoing discussion about what else, safety..
Nice write up on a topic that isn’t mentioned much and that even I myself sometimes takes for granted…
While initially laughing at those great pictures you found, I too applaud those workers for being both smart and brave enough to take precausionary measure to enhance their safety! Very smart workers!!!
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MR, I’ve used a disc grinder on a couple of occasions where I’d wished I had a full face mask instead of just goggles. Those metal bits hurt! I can’t imagine how plastic wrap helps much, but I guess it did for that fellow.
Those pics are hilarious. I saw one somewhere with one forklift lifting another forklift to reach two stories. Incredible.
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I know that picture. I saw in a series on darkroastedblend.com. Crazy!
We probably don’t give enough respect to safety when younger (well, I didn’t, and I’ve done some boneheaded things while doing manual labour jobs while younger), but it’s definitely important. Only one body and one life!
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Well, you’re in good company in the bonehead department. I could recount some spectacularly idiotic moves in my younger stupider days (and have the scars to prove it!).
[...] Centavos: HSE: Health, Safety and Environmental – Safe Work Practices in The Home – Info on proper safety practices, and really cool pictures of ingenious workers from [...]
[...] HSE: Health, Safety and Environmental – Safe Work Practices in The Home (101 Centavos) [...]
[...] 101 Centavos reminds us of how important it is to be safe at home and work. I need to remember this when I play racquetball as I quite often leave the safety goggles at home. (They are just so darn uncomfortable!) Make sure you check out the pictures too. [...]
An ounce of prevention is worth………..
Great post, I worked some really physically tough jobs when I was younger and I find that unfortunately you are only as safe as the people around you. (Who, in my case, would often come close to maiming/killing me). In hindsight it helps me appreciate what I have now and always makes for a good story. I am running a “suckiest job” contest at my site in honor of it.
Hi brokeprofessionals, thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. You could be as safe as you can be, and some idiot next to you could put your life at risk. That’s why safety at work begins with management commitment to establish/change the culture. But in personal life, it starts and ends with you – you’re the management.