December is a time to plan for Christmas and that means engaging in activities you don’t often do—like increased cooking or baking (or attempting new recipes)—and getting caught up in the rush of the season.
There is an influx of people on the roads to do their holiday shopping, get extra groceries, and visit more often with friends and family this time of year. Because the things you do during the holidays are not your usual routine, it’s easy to be distracted and get caught up in what you’re doing—and human factors have a way of impacting people without them noticing.
According to our guide, Fighting Familiarity: Overcoming Complacency in the Workplace,
Human factors can create a cycle where a certain level of complacency allows individuals to feel comfortable enough to rush or continue working when tired or frustrated, then the rushing leads to frustration, which leads to fatigue, which can add more complacency—individuals become less vigilant, more prone to errors, and ultimately more likely to underestimate risks.
This is especially true this time of year. But it’s not just the workplace you need to worry about—particular attention to 24/7 safety is needed. The holiday season seems to be a time when haste increases, and people are unknowingly (or knowingly and uncaringly) rushing to complete the extra things on their to-do list. Combine those human factors with traffic congestion from increased holiday shopping and winter weather conditions affecting the drives, and you’re likely to see more accidents and injuries.
No one ever thinks that they’ll be the one in an “accident,” especially not when you’re too busy thinking about joy, hope, and family togetherness. Stories are a great way to learn lessons and proactively prevent incidents—they help us learn vicariously through others.
That’s why storytelling is a key part of SafeStart because people remember the stories long after the training. We have a certain structure to the way our SafeStart stories are told to capture what is needed to grasp the key takeaways.
Check out this SafeStart story from SafeStart’s Marketing Manager Rachael Daniels. While a lot of stories have to do with driving, this one is something that happened at home. It’s called Unintentional Improvised Explosive Dessert (IED)—a bit of military humor, as an IED is an Improvised Explosive Device. She recalls the first Christmas that she and her husband hosted their entire family for the holiday soon after he came back from being deployed overseas, and she shares the habit that she and her husband share to this day.
You can read it like a toolbox talk, use it as a safety share at your next meeting or print it out to see if you can get a discussion going in the breakroom. The human factors depicted in the story are ones that anyone can relate to. As is the main subject of the story—who can’t relate to your first time hosting a big family meal?
From all of us at SafeStart, have a safe and happy holiday!