Today (January 13, 2021), the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the OSHA's emergency temporary standard requiring businesses with more than 100 employees to ensure workers are vaccinated against the coronavirus or wear masks and undergo weekly COVID-19 testing. The majority opinion said that although Congress has given OSHA the power to regulate dangers in the workplace, "it has not given that agency the power to regulate public health more broadly. Requiring the vaccination of 84 million Americans, selected simply because they work for employers with more than 100 employees, certainly falls in the latter category." However, SCOTUS allowed the federal government [...]

From slippery elevated work areas to white-knuckle driving in blizzard conditions, winter poses some serious challenges to workers across much of North America. Here are seven statistics related to working in winter conditions: When climbing onto or off of equipment during the snowy season, workers should maintain three points of contact to increase their stability and reduce their chances of slipping or falling. One way to help keep your balance when walking on slippery surfaces is to keep your hands out of your pockets. Two things to avoid before shoveling snow are caffeine and nicotine, because they increase your heart rate and may cause [...]

After over 25 years of preaching and teaching it, I’ve come to realize that safety is a culture, not just a workday activity. It is a part of our lives. Accordingly, successful safety programs need to address not just workplace but home injuries. As the weather turns cold, there is one important home safety topic that I take up with my employees: Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning. Here’s what I tell them. High Cost of Fuel Increases CO Risks Mid-fall is the start of the CO season. This is when we start firing up furnaces, wood burners, space heaters and the [...]

The first week of 2022 offers an opportunity to stand on a soapbox and do a little bit of forecasting for the year ahead, so here goes. Between the massive potential fines and civil liabilities for not having a safe workplace and the need to retain motivated employees, employers will focus even more attention in 2022 on workplace health and safety. If you aren’t, you should be! In addition, with Omicron and the further spread of COVID-19, governments and private businesses are leading the way with compulsory vaccinations and policies that basically say “be vaccinated or get fired” and they [...]

As the Omicron variant is spreading and rapidly becoming the dominant strain across North America, there are resurging issues with testing, vaccinations, quarantine timelines, social distancing and everything that we have all been moving away from for the last few months. You're not alone in feeling like you are perpetually stuck in a grindhouse version of Groundhog's Day - only it's the same six month pattern over and over and over again. You're not alone in being exhausted, or feeling like you just want to throw in the towel. There was a sense of hubris when the mRNA vaccines were approved. [...]

This desire for measurement and feedback—for keeping score–is critical to how we live our lives. It is also the key to the success of our safety program. For one reason, it lets us know how well we’re doing. For another, it can serve as a motivating force to the extent that people in the workplace will make the effort to earn a “good score.” Let’s discuss how to measure safety performance and use measurement and feedback as a motivating force to exert positive change on our organization’s safety culture. The Power of Measurement Each of us uses measurements every day, both [...]

As with other hazards, worker education and training are crucial to preventing cold stress. By the time they complete their training, workers need to understand: What cold stress is; Why it’s dangerous; How to protect themselves from the danger; How to recognize the signs and symptoms of the different forms of cold stress; and How to respond if they or a co-worker exhibits such signs or symptoms. Here’s how to provide introductory cold stress training to your own workers. GET THEIR ATTENTION: Start out by letting workers know what’s at stake. Explain that being in the cold too long isn’t just uncomfortable but dangerous because [...]

Driving in winter weather conditions poses certain challenges, including slippery roads, reduced visibility, etc. Here are 10 safety tips to give your workers—especially but not just those who drive as part of their duties. 1. Clear Off the Snow Brush the snow from all of the windows, hood, roof, side mirrors, headlights and tail lights—not just a small area on the front windshield and then start driving. 2. Check Road Conditions Before heading out, check to see what the current road conditions are and what type of weather you should expect. It’s also a good idea to make sure someone is aware of your [...]

Are you doing enough to protect your workers against the risks of cold-stress? If one of your workers should suffer a serious or fatal cold-stress injury, could you and your company be liable? When Is Cold Stress a “Recognized Hazard”? The first thing to clarify is when cold stress becomes a recognized hazard. It’s not temperature alone. It’s how cold the air actually feels on the body. There are 4 factors that employers must consider in determining how cold is too cold: Temperature of the air; Wind or other factors causing the air to move at a high velocity—thereby making it [...]

Discipline has gotten a bad rap. In the workplace setting, those who decry discipline include both the administrators who should be dishing it out and representatives of employees who should be receiving it. The end result is that discipline often doesn’t get imposed even when it’s richly deserved. And in the realm of health and safety, absence of discipline is a recipe for disaster. The Discrediting of Discipline Once upon a time, discipline was lauded as a fundamental value. In some cultures, it still is. So why has it become such a bugaboo for us? After all, we would all [...]