Winter brings with it a number of well-known hazards, including ice and slush—both of which increase the risk of slip incidents. It also brings frigid conditions that can cause cold stress, which is a major problem for people who work outdoors. The winter solstice means shorter days, leading to fatigue and higher rates of driving in the dark, which is typically more dangerous than daytime driving. To say the coldest season is dangerous is an understatement.
A recent column in Occupational Health & Safety titled “Expanding the Scope of Winter Safety” argues that while these are the most obvious winter safety risks, they’re hardly the only ones. And as the article says, safety managers need to worry about more than just warm gloves and road salt.
In fact, one of the biggest concerns for EHS professionals isn’t a physical hazard at all—it’s complacency. The author, Ray Prest, argues that safety professionals have tried-and-true tactics for dealing with cold and slip hazards in the winter. But because they run the same playbook every year—delivering the same toolbox talks and the same reminders about ice and cold, over and over again—these safety interventions are failing to have the intended effect. As Prest says:
These efforts are well-intentioned. They’re also not overly effective. Injury Facts tracks temperature-related fatalities in a single category, titled “Natural Heat or Cold.” Looking at only December, January and February to isolate for cold-induced fatalities, the data reveals that the number of fatal incidents has stubbornly refused to decline from 2013 to 2022, the most recent year for which there is data. In that time, the rate of cold fatalities has held largely steady, with a notable uptick in 2021 and 2022. If anything, things are getting worse.
What’s likely happening here is that after years of hearing the same messaging, workers start to tune it out. They also become complacent about the hazards, which means they aren’t accurately responding to the risk at hand while also ignoring the safety reminders that could help them more accurately recognize the dangers of winter.
All of this leads to a much higher winter-hazard incident rate than necessary.
As for what health and safety professionals should do about it all, the article offers three suggestions: adjusting conversations, focusing on 24/7 issues and widening the discussion of winter safety to include human factors.
Non-complacent conversations
When it comes to safety meetings and toolbox talks, clearly the usual approach isn’t working. Prest suggests this offers an opportunity to try something new:
“Because winter hazards arrive year in and year out, find approaches that encourage employees to shake off plenty of complacency. Take a different tack in safety meetings by getting workers to participate. One option is to ask them to predict when and where a cold-weather injury might occur. Or instruct them to rank winter hazards according to their relevance to the workplace. Or ask workers how they would educate their kids about cold stress if they got a job on the crew.”
Engaging workers in conversations about cold and ice makes them more likely to internalize the message that winter hazards can be more harmful than they might fully recognize.
Year-round 24/7 safety
Another way to brush off complacency regarding winter safety is to help workers see the ways that a winter-related incident could affect them away from work.
One of the examples offered by the article is to ask workers questions such as, “how would it affect their personal lives to get frostbite or injure themselves by slipping?” You could also help emphasize the extent to which other people in workers’ lives—such as friends, family members and their wider community—might be affected if workers are injured or killed by the cold and ice.
The goal here is to get employees to start seeing the impact that an injury can have. Doing so can go a long way toward reducing the complacency that magnifies the risk of winter incidents. And while these conversations are easiest to have in one-on-one chats, they can also be part of a larger strategy of including off-the-job toolbox talks in workplace safety meetings.
Human factors are a winter safety issue
Perhaps the most insightful part of the article on winter safety is a discussion about the role that human factors management plays in keeping people safe when the temperature drops.
The winter months can exacerbate a wide range of human factors, from rushing and fatigue to stress and frustration. When these human factors combine with icy conditions and the threat of cold stress, the result is an elevated risk of incident.
Managing human factors is a much wider topic than just helping workers deal with winter hazards. But as the article demonstrates, a proper human factors training program can help with winter-specific issues.
In fact, what might look on the surface like a seasonal problem could actually be the tip of a much larger human factors iceberg. Fortunately, that means that implementing a human factors intervention can go a long way towards addressing not only winter safety issues but a host of other safety concerns too.