Toolbox Meeting

Toolbox meeting, normal people just wondering what this "toolbox" meeting all about? Talking about toolbox, meeting about arising matters or tasks.... for Safety & Health Practitioners, it is a common "pep talk" with the employees... my opinion, toolbox meeting should meet criteria below
a. a talk about OSH topic of course
b. an OSH topic related to the job that the worker wants to deliver
c. KISS (Keep It Simple, Short) principle applied

So, where, when, how to deliver the toolbox meeting, it depends on us then. For me, the best time is before the worker start the work. Toolbox meeting works as a friendly reminder to our beloved worker to be careful & follow all the Safety & Health DOs & DON'Ts during the work... that is all, I can say...

What about the topic? Tonnes of topic you can discuss... here are some links that you can used to select the topic...
http://www.safetytoolboxtalks.com/
http://safety-made-simple.com/toolboxsafetytopics/

Last but not least, try to be creative to make the toolbox meeting is the best & enjoyable session with your workers!! Goodluck

How to Use Safety's Magic Metre

another good article that I received from SafetyXChange...

http://www.safetyxchange.org/training-and-leadership/

How to Use Safety’s Magic Metre

June 1, 2010

Bill Dickerson

I’ve been teaching safety to young workers for 20 years, and I’d like to share with you one of the more successful tips I’ve developed: The Magic Metre.

The “Magic Metre” (or “Magic Yardstick”) is a visual image new workers can use to protect themselves from all kinds of hazards. A “Magic Metre” is the distance from your nose to your fingertips. It’s almost like a 360 degree bubble all around you, including up and down.

Eleven Ways to Apply the Magic Metre

When delivering high school safety talks and new worker orientations, here are some ways I suggest they apply the Magic Metre.

1. Noise: If you have to raise your voice above a normal talking level to be heard one Magic Metre away, you are likely exposed to over 85 Dba and require hearing protection.

2. Moving Equipment: When working around moving equipment such as chain drives, conveyors, etc., if you maintain a Magic Metre from your outstretched fingertips, you are unlikely to fall into the equipment or pinch point. The same concept works for hot pipes, electrical hazards etc.

3. Biohazards: If you maintain a Magic Metre from a fellow worker with a cough or cold you are likely beyond the “sneeze spray zone.” Maintain the same Magic Metre from blood and body fluids and products unless protected.

4. Tools: Protect yourself and others by maintaining a Magic Metre or “safety bubble” around you when using power tools, hammers, axes, etc.

5. Chemicals: From the MSDS, determine how many Magic Metres are required between you and chemicals you may be exposed to.

6. Workplace Violence: Maintain a Magic Metre between you and an angry customer or co-worker. Position yourself to minimize your exposure as a target, and protect vital areas.

7. Eye Protection: Wear your safety glasses or goggles within a Magic Metre of any process that could result in flying objects.

8. Fall Protection: A worker can be seriously hurt from a fall or poorly planned jump of even less than a Magic Metre. You require fall arrest protection if your feet are two Magic Metres above the next level.

9. Lifting and carrying: The safest zone for carrying loads is within the Magic Metre from your knees to your shoulders.

10. Call Before You Dig: Don’t dig (including hand dig) within a Magic Metre either side of a utility locate marker (hydro, gas, telephone, etc.).

11. Falling Objects: Almost anything that falls a Magic Metre onto you will hurt!

Conclusion

Feel free to use any of these suggestions in your new and young worker training. And if you think of any to add, I’d love to hear them.

Something to ponder "The Day I Became Committed to Safety"

This article is taken from Safety Xchange at "http://www.safetyxchange.org/health-safety/day-committed-safety-3?utm_source=emailmarketer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3605"

The Day I Became Committed to Safety

May 18, 2010

A SafetyXChange Member

Editor’s Note: A couple of weeks, Art Fettig described the day he became committed to safety. We invited SafetyXChange members to share their defining moments. Last week, we ran Jim’s story. Here are Bill and Steve’s.

My Defining Moment

I worked for many years in the meat packing industry. (There’s an industry with a history of “accidents are inevitable...” culture.) I spent many years working in the role of shop steward trying to make my workplace better for the workers.

A number of years ago, I was standing at my job station when I felt a steel tank full of meat nudge up against me. I thought the pallet truck operator was trying to be funny. Quickly, I was pinned up against the table with the pallet truck driving the tank into me from behind, crushing my pelvis then upper legs against the steel frame of the conveyor table. I heard screaming and couldn’t believe the sounds were actually coming from me.

When I was lying on the ground waiting for the ambulance, the pallet truck operator told me that the emergency bump switch must have shorted out. He placed the load behind me and as he pulled away the drive wheel reversed direction and he couldn’t stop it. (The emergency bump switch is a safety device that causes the pallet truck to drive away from an object by reversing the drive for several seconds should the driver run into something with the steering mechanism. This is to ensure it doesn’t pin the driver.)

Not having much of a safety background at the time, I just thought I had been unlucky. Fortunately, I hadn’t broken any bones so I was able to return to work in a few weeks. After I got back to work, the Safety Manager brought me a copy of the completed accident report, in which one of the major conclusions was that the pallet truck was poorly maintained (a systemic problem at our plant). I never would have thought of looking that far into it at the time. I just assumed they would repair it and carry on. Several other items were identified and dealt with as well.

A few years later, I became involved as an OHS committee member, then eventually went to school and became a Safety Officer. One of the classes I took required me to interview three safety professionals. And one of the questions I asked was, “what was your defining moment?” It was only as I wrote my report that I realized what mine had been!

I would encourage everyone to go back and think about your defining moment or ‘moment of truth’ as a source of motivation when things seem tough.

I’m happy to report that we made major strides in improving the health and safety program and culture at my former place of employment.

Bill Bennett

*****

How I “Got It”

I first entered the safety field on a part-time basis. As an Air Force officer, I had to take on “additional duties”. Someone asked if I was interested in being the squadron safety officer. It sounded OK to me. It was the beginning of a career that has lasted over 30 years (so far). It was rewarding work, but I didn’t really become truly committed until I had left the service.

I was working at a cement company as the safety director. An employee ran into my office and shouted that “Fred” fell out of ball mill #1. Ball mills crush cement and other materials. They are cylindrical in shape and are loaded with steel balls that do the crushing, as the mill rotates.

Periodically these mills require a “recharge.” Access panels are removed at the top and bottom of the mill. Employees enter and push the balls out of the bottom access hole. The balls would fall about 30 feet and land in a pile.

I caught several employees walking on top of the mill, climbing in, and pushing out balls with no fall protection. Needless to say, I shut down the operation immediately. I contacted the supervisor. We planned out the procedure, obtained the necessary equipment, and trained the employees how to use them.

One employee in particular (the aforementioned Fred) complained angrily, saying he had worked there for 30 years, had never used such equipment, and had never fallen. As far as he was concerned, it was a complete waste of time.

When the co-worker rushed into my office, saying Fred had fallen out of the mill, I pictured him lying on top of the pile of steel balls, 30 feet below the mill. I was sure I had a fatality on my hands. When I arrived, Fred was sitting in a chair, obviously very shaken, but alive. He just wanted to get back to work. He had worn the fall protection equipment, and it had saved his life, but he would never admit it. He was too embarrassed.

As for me, I finally “got it.” I understood how truly valuable my work was. I had actually saved someone’s life by stopping a potentially disastrous situation, planning a task, providing equipment, and training employees. In this business, we don’t often see the results of what we do. I began to wonder how many other lives I might have saved over the years.

I received no awards, no promotion, no raise, not even a “thank you” from the employee or his family, but I was truly rewarded, just knowing that he had lived.

I’ve thought about that incident over the years. It keeps me going at times when the day-to-day activities don’t seem to accomplish much. I guess I’ll never know, this side of Heaven, what I’ve accomplished, but at least now I have an idea.

Steve Hughes

SHO: Knowledgeable or Competence??

I like to highlight on this issue, & I did discuss this issue in the NRG-SHE mailing list. This is important so that SHO must aware that how important is knowledge in managing OSH & they must be competent.

Knowledgeable SHO can't really become a competent SHO BUT competent SHO should be knowledgeable. Few literature or study has been done on competency. The one that I can recall is competency consists of
1. Knowledge
2. Skills
3. Attitude

Competence SHO has a capability to apply their knowledge in the workplace. Not just that, he/she also has the capacity to share or teach their knowledge to other people. They know what they are talking & also they walk the talk... "the shift from knowing to showing (Burz, HL & Marshall, K)"

In Malaysia, currently it's a trend that there are graduates or employees interested to become SHO. This is a positive trend BUT it is also can cause negative impacts due to the "quality" of SHOs. To all SHOs, apply your knowledge at the workplace by learning & practising few critical skills such as communication, negotiation, presentation etc... Furthermore, don't think that we have a green book, that's the end of the learning journey as SHO...

"The more you know, the more you know that you don't know" - Steven R Covey

How to select an OSH consultant?

Something to share... from safetyxchange.org
(http://www.safetyxchange.org/the-safety-profession-and-your-career/safety-consultant-2?utm_source=emailmarketer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3568)

What to Look for in a Safety Consultant

February 19, 2010

Wayne Pardy, CRSP

Much of what the average safety practitioner reads each day comes not from peers but consultants. This growing cadre of safety consultants and their prevalence in the print and electronic media isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There are many excellent consultants out there; but there are many less than excellent consultants, too. If you’re seeking to hire a consultant—or simply looking for the right ones to read—you need to know how to separate the good from the bad.

How Safety Consultants Work

In the interest of full disclosure, let me preface these remarks by acknowledging that I’m a safety consultant myself. So you might want to take what I say with a grain of salt. As Joaquin Setanti so aptly put it, "Be wary of the man who urges an action in which he himself incurs no risk."

Consultants come in a myriad of varieties. Some do nothing but consult. Others are part-timers who consultant in their off hours or as a means to promote other products or services. Some take up consulting to supplement their income after retirement. But all consultants have one thing in common: To earn their money they must persuade others to take and act upon their advice.

Separating Style from Substance

Consequently, self-promotion and marketing is a big part of the consulting racket. Consultants typically write books or publish articles to gain recognition that they can then parlay into paying clients. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. In fact, the writings of consultants can be one of the best tools in deciding who to use. Consultants whose writings are vacuous and devoid of substance aren’t likely to provide quality consultations. Those who make you think and ask questions, on the other hand, are the ones you want to consider.

Be on the lookout not just for empty writings but empty promises. Consultants who tout their systems as the best thing since sliced bread should raise a red flag. Nobody has all the answers all the time—especially in the dynamic realm of safety which is constantly shifting and dependent on local conditions.

Personally, if I were in a client’s shoes, I’d steer clear of consultants who pitch themselves with humor. If you want entertainment, hire a clown. Safety is serious stuff. Of course, there’s room for levity in all endeavors, including safety. But while humor can spice up the information, the consultant should be hired for expertise and excellence, not just delivery.

Safety Consultants and Objectivity

Another thing to watch out for is bias. According to Thomas C Redman, companies assume that consultants are objective, evidence-based and not part of the company’s internal power struggle. But while consultants may not have a corporate agenda, they’re not devoid of biases. On the contrary, the system and knowledge most consultants bring to the table is rooted in a theory or understanding of the world like behaviorism.

Biases in a safety consultant don’t necessarily mar the quality of the advice. The important thing is to understand the biases of the consultants you hire before you hire them and not assume that the information they’re providing is 100% objective.

The 4 Fundamental Things Safety Consultants Owe to Clients

Self-promotion and bias are acceptable in a safety consultant. But my feeling—I call it the Pardy Doctrine—is that there are certain fundamental obligations that all consultants owe to their clients:

1. Accuracy

Our work must be truthful and accurate. We must base our positions on sources that are trustworthy and accurate. We also need to let the client know when the positions we assert are just an opinion.

2. The Willingness to Admit What We Don’t Know

Nobody has the right to demand perfection from their consultant. But while honest mistakes and lack of knowledge are acceptable, what cannot be tolerated is the consultant’s failure to admit when he doesn’t know the answer or act like every bit of his advice is “research-based.” We just have to be honest about our limitations and not seek to conceal them.

We also need to be willing to admit when our assertions are contradicted by a major line of research (as is the case with Heinrich or behavioral safety and Skinnerian theories of human behavior) ) or are the product of a particular ideological bent. Acknowledgement is critical because it enables clients to make informed decisions about our work. A wise man once said, that there are two sides to every story. . . and then, somewhere in the middle, there’s the truth.

For example, read what people like Scott Geller, Thomas Krause, Terry Mathis and Aubrey Daniels have to say about behavior-based safety and associated theories. But by all means read what people like Donald J. Eckenfelder, Alfie Cohn, Thomas Smith, and Fred A Manuele have to say about them, as well.

3. Currency

We must always strive to ensure our ideas, approaches and work are up-to-date. Personally speaking, I can attest that keeping current is hard work and time consuming. But those who don’t make the investment are doomed to staleness. It’s equally hard to change our views in light of experience and new knowledge. But we must all be willing and able to accept new approaches.

4. Service

The client’s interest always comes before our own. Always.

Conclusion

I’ll leave you with two final words of advice to ensure you get the most from your consultant dollar. First, any time you contract for the services of a consultant, be very clear about your performance expectations and deliverables. Second, don’t entrust a consultant with ownership of your problem. Consultants can play a vital role in profiling the options. But at the end of the day, you’re the one who has to live with the impact of implementing the consultant’s advice. In short, the consultant doesn’t replace your own experience but empowers you to use it to help your company and its safety program most effectively.