Safety training and consulting

Do you know your rights as an employee? Do you know how to exercise those rights? Does your spouse or child have a job that you feel puts them in unnecessary danger? Many employers continue to put their workers unnecessarily in danger’s way. So, it is to those workers that this article is written for.

All jobs carry a certain amount of risk, and I’m good with that. Taking risks is how we learn from failure and grow, as individuals, companies, and society. During my lifetime, I grew up farming and have worked as a roofer, machinist, firefighter, and dogsled guide, among other hazardous occupations and I have great respect for people who perform jobs with higher risks. Our world needs the roughnecks who work the oil rigs where one mistake can be catastrophic and the police officers who have zero idea what risk is around the next corner but face it anyway. Our society would grind to a cold halt without the people who take immense risk and manage it with intense skill and dedication.

It is the moral and legal obligation of an employer to put safeguards in place and not unnecessarily put those employees and the public at risk. Just because an industry has inherent risks does not mean the worker should show up for work at their own peril, though. It is important for you as a worker to understand that there are acceptable and unacceptable risks in the workplace, and you should not have to take unacceptable risks to pay your bills. Unacceptable risk is going to be different for an office worker, roofer, and firefighter, but in each case, there are risks and requirements.

I’m going to skip over the safety requirements that we’ve all seen, like posters and OSHA 300 logs, and jump straight to the things that are potentially the most impactful for you. There are many other requirements, but these are what I see as the most prevalent….

When people think of safety, we usually think of preventing the big “accidents”…fingers in machinery, falls from ladders, fires, and explosions. Safety is not just preventing accidents, though!

Our field is called occupational health & safety (OHS) for a reason…half of our field is “health”, but rarely gets considered because “safety” is easy to track. Cuts, falls, and bruises are easy to identify, categorize, and correct. “Health” is not so easy. Workers may not realize they’ve had any negative effects from a chemical exposure until years later when they no longer even remember getting exposed. Musculoskeletal injuries may progressively worsen or linger in the background of a worker’s life without a cause being easily identified. Hearing loss may not become evident until several years into audiometric testing when the damage is done, or after an employee leaves and they never realize they had a hearing loss.

Our role in business management is protecting employees. It just makes good business sense. When employees don’t feel well, they call in sick more often and succumb to illnesses easier. If you are frustrated with the endless bouts of flu season and COVID infections, why wouldn’t you try to make your employees healthier? When we hurt our bodies through poor ergonomics, chemical exposures, and without proper hearing protection, employees go home and suffer back or shoulder pain or ignoring the ringing in their ears because “it’s just part of the job”, or they are having chronic health issues that their spouse just knows is from some chemical they work with but can’t put their finger on it. Why would you not want to fix these issues?…

Let’s talk about where an SDS, NIOSH Pocket Guide, Emergency Response Guidebook, and the WISER app all have a role in finding chemical hazards. They all have their place and limitations. When you work with chemicals, it is important…

First aid and CPR instructor Tim Harves and I discuss OSHA’s requirements for a trained first response team, some considerations and legal requirements, equipment you should have, training, and other aspects…

Do you struggle with writing safety policies? I discuss how to determine which policies you need, how to figure out what to include, keeping them brief and easy to follow, and what should and should not be in them!

Did you know Minnesota OSHA, or MNOSHA, has additional requirements for employers that Federal OSHA does not have? Here I talk about general industry standards that are different.