Blog

Stay up to date on the issues safety professionals care about: industry news, compliance guidelines, employee engagement and workplace culture, safety training, and more.

Be a Champion of Safety in Indiana with Kevin Cobb

SafeStart’s Senior Safety Consultant Kevin Cobb will be speaking at the 2016 Indiana Safety and Health Conference & Expo. His session, titled Conquering the CAVEman (Citizens Against Virtually Everything), is scheduled for Tuesday, March 22 from 12:30-1:45 p.m. In his session, Kevin  will discuss the impact that negative people can have in an organization and…

Locking Out Decision Fatigue

Could decision fatigue be the reason behind some human factors incidents in your workplace? As Ray Prest explains in his latest article in the Winter/Spring 2016 issue of Safety Decisions magazine, decision fatigue plays a huge role in how well workers follow lockout/tagout procedures: When workers are suffering from decision fatigue, they may be more…

The Impact of Fatigue: Sleep or Die

Many of us have a sense that drowsiness can represent a danger in the workplace. But few people are fully aware of just how much fatigue can affect almost every aspect of your life… and it’s far more serious than you think. The impact of fatigue is highlighted in an infographic called “Sleep or Die”,…

Walking the Line Between Risk and Reward

Mike Shaw, SafeStart Director of Education and Athletics, recently delivered a rather personal keynote presentation to the North Eastern Alberta Teachers Convention. Mike has a unique story about surviving significant spinal trauma and paralysis from the neck down after a freestyle skiing accident in 2013. The convention encourages teachers to introduce new ideas into the…

Don Wilson Providing Leadership for Today’s Problems

Don Wilson, Vice President of SafeStart, will be speaking on Leadership for Today’s Problems (session 245) at the 2016 Ohio Safety Congress & Expo. This session will address a common problem in most companies—the high number of off-the-job injuries and fatalities. Many companies believe that because they happen off the job there’s nothing the employer…

Brewing A Better Safety Record

Heineken is one of the most internationally recognized brands. But creating such a world-famous product requires rigorous business standards. From quality to safety, Heineken always strives to be best in class. When the company’s Brazilian operations experienced a couple dozen recordable incidents in 2012, the brewing giant turned to SafeStart for help with injury reduction…

4 Ways to Improve Near-miss Reporting

As safety reports go, accident/incident investigations typically consume more time, energy and resources than near-miss reporting. As important as it is to investigate these types of incidents and take appropriate corrective action, it is equally important to investigate near-miss reports because like accident/incident investigations they can play a large role in preventing future incidents. Whether…

Motivating Safety with Quotes

Motivation just might be the secret sauce in workplace safety. Even with good training and sensible rules and procedures, the overall effectiveness of a safety program depends to a large degree on how employees are motivated. And recent research suggests that behavior could be more affected by external catalysts than we realize. A professor at…

The Habit of Safety

Habits play an essential role in safe behavior. And as Tim Page-Bottorff explains in his article “The Habit of Safety: Forming, Changing & Reinforcing Key Behaviors”, they can be a key driver of whether workers wear their PPE, strain their back or slip while walking. The article reviews current research on the subject and provides…

3 Quick Safety Wins

Even minor changes in corporate safety programs are usually measured in months or years, not days. And safety leadership isn’t just about establishing new procedures or placing a huge order for new PPE. Instead, it’s about motivating employees to do their best to reduce the risk of injury. In that light, here are several ways…

The Fourth Hierarchy of Control with Larry Wilson and Tim Page-Bottorff

SafeStart’s own Larry Wilson and Tim Page-Bottorff  will deliver the Friday opening keynote Zero Harm: The Fourth Hierarchy of Control at the 2016 Region IV ASSE Professional Development Conference. Larry is the creator of SafeStart and Tim is a Senior Safety Consultant with 18 years of occupational health, safety and environmental management experience. In this…

3 Ways to Use Our Back Guide

We recently released our free guide on re-thinking back injuries. It covers all the traditional areas of back safety, like proper lifting techniques, the consequences of hurting your back, and weight thresholds for safe lifting. It also outlines human factors issues and an under-discussed problem with back belts. And it provides a few other practical…