Senin, 21 Oktober 2013

Simple Safety Vests Can Save Lives

By Elena McDowell


The business of protecting people in the work environment is difficult, largely because despite the fact that rational people understand that it is the right thing to do, they prefer not to. Unfortunately, vigilance is quite possibly the hardest skill for the human spirit, we become complacent far too easily. For this reason it all the more important for workers to wear safety vests.

For the most part, workers have come to expect their work environment to be risk free, without their having to participate in any way. What the people hired to reduce these problems are actually charged with doing is identifying vulnerabilities, developing the means to mitigate them, and create a strategy to address the issues. The leadership is ultimately responsible for deciding what will be done.

Human beings seem hardwired to believe in an irrational sense of indestructibility, or at least their behavior would indicate that to be the case. How else could one explain that people engage in such a wide variety of thrilling and dangerous events, voluntarily, in the pursuit of excitement and happiness. Rides at amusement parks are engineered to draw as close to the limits of human physical tolerance as possible.

If marketing portrays a ride with dizzying heights, outrageous speeds and twists and turns in darkness, the popularity of the ride skyrockets. Just about anything that places humans in situations that could result in their serious injury, if not death becomes popular. From driving at unsafe speeds, tightrope walking to sports, danger creates a fan base.

Not all of the rejection is predicated on spite, people have a natural feeling that the kinds of injuries and mishaps targeted in the work environment require are prevented by common sense. The idea they have become the focus of attention is due to recurrence is not accepted as a normal event, but the result of buffoonery at some level. The preventive measure is then sensed as punishment for the incompetence of others.

There is also the problem of ego. From the beginning of the hormonal tidal wave of their teen years, males have an innate need to place themselves in dangerous situations to prove they are macho. Whether to impress the opposite sex or to bond with fellow males, being known as a rational, safe individual is not a title to which many aspire.

All of this transferred to the work environment is the hurdle that professionals must overcome in reducing risk in the workplace. The situation is difficult enough without the added burden of people deliberately ignoring the solutions developed for their protection. Some personal protective gear has overcome the stigma, such as construction helmets, but not many.

The pathway to getting protective equipment, polices and procedures integrated into normal, daily operations is long and complicated. Justification and statistics do little to win the hearts and minds of the intended beneficiaries. The use of safety vests to protect workers, despite the obvious benefits proven through mishap statistics, is still difficult to get employees to consistently accept as a means of preventing tragic injuries or deaths.




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