February 2010 Safety Topic: Unsafe Acts
February 4th, 2010 by
Last month we discussed what your responsibilities are as employee with Minuteman Parking Company to stay safe while working. More than 65,000 work related injuries each year are due to unsafe work practices or short cuts that people take while performing there job. Many employees believe that if they can do the job faster they are doing the job better; sometimes fast is not safe and we want to be safe at all times.
Minuteman Parking Company has policies and procedures in place to help keep you safe while you are at work. Still many of our employees do not always follow our safe work practices.
Two things can add to an employee getting injured at work. The first thing is an unsafe act or practice. The second thing is an unsafe condition. Studies have shown that 9 out of 10 accidents are the results of unsafe acts, or things we do when we know better. Why do employees deliberately expose themselves to injuries? Most employees have one of the two following thoughts running through their heads when they do their jobs unsafely.
· It won’t happen to me.
· We all take short cuts while we are working.
It won’t happen to me.
Most of us probably have had this thought run through our head at one time or another while working. This thought is a form of rationalization of the risk of getting injured while working. We think that we have done this job over and over and nothing has ever happened to me; therefore nothing bad will happen to me. You know the right way to do it, you realize that it is hazardous to do your job this way, but you really believe that “it won’t happen to me.”
We all take short cuts.
Some employees are very meticulous about following safe work practices. Because we do our jobs day in and day out we become comfortable; our jobs become routine. When your job becomes routine you have a higher chance of using an unsafe method of doing your job like jumping over a fence or skipping a couple of steps in the stairwell. The time you save is not worth the potential injury to yourself.
One out of ten unsafe acts lead to a workplace injury. We all know better, we know the safe way of doing our jobs from the training we all have received. Don’t be a statistic. Be Safe and Happy.