Safety Culture

Your health and well-being are your most valuable possessions. Many laws and regulations have been passed to ensure employee safety, yet every year thousands of serious injuries occur— often with serious long-term consequences for both employees and employers.

Safety is a learned behaviour and attitude; it is a way of working that must be incorporated into the company as a culture. Everybody in a company, from management to labourers, must be responsible for safety every day they come to work.

Companies with strong safety cultures usually have:

• Fewer at-risk behaviours
• Lower accident rates
• Less employee turnover
• Lower absenteeism
• Higher productivity

Most work-site safety rules are a matter of common sense, but people sometimes forget or ignore them in an effort to save time or energy.

The ultimate responsibility for on-the-job safety, however, rests with you. By following the practices in this section, you and your co-workers commit to working safely, and everyone benefits.

Main Causes of Accidents

An accident is defined as an unplanned event that may or may not result in an injury or property damage. Some of the main causes of accidents include:

• Failure to communicate
• Poor work habits/complacency
• Alcohol or drug abuse
• Lack of skill/training
• Intentional acts
• Unsafe acts
• Rationalizing risks
• Unsafe conditions

Personal injury may be classified as either permanent or temporary. Either way, it is costly in terms of pain and lost time, wages, and productivity. It is far more beneficial to all involved if injury is avoided altogether from the outset. To ensure this, every effort should be made to identify and address potential hazards.

Workplace Hazards

To work safely, you must know the kinds of hazards to which you may be exposed and how to minimize the risk of injury. When hazards are identified and assessed, they can be addressed quickly, reducing the hazard potential and the likelihood of harm.

Watch the following video by WorkSafeBC (2010) on YouTube titled “Understanding Hazards and Risks” [1:59].

These hazards may be of an obvious nature—presenting immediate danger—or they may be very subtle and cause damage through exposure over a longer period of time. For example, many workers in noisy environments gradually lose their hearing without realizing it. This may result in high- or low-frequency hearing loss, depending on the intensity and duration of exposure.

Watch the following video by WorkSafeBC (2006) on YouTube titled “The Hearing Video (SD) | WorkSafeBC” [17:30].

Hazard Assessment

A critical first step in developing a comprehensive safety and health program is identifying physical and health hazards in the workplace. This process is known as a hazard assessment. An effective hazard assessment considers both categories.

Examples of physical hazards include moving objects, fluctuating temperatures, high-intensity lighting, rolling or pinching hazards, electrical connections, and sharp edges. Examples of health hazards include overexposure to harmful dusts, chemicals, or radiation.

There are several methods for recognizing hazards on the job site. Some are more complex than others. One common method is a Job Safety Analysis (JSA), where each step of a task is examined for potential hazards. Another approach, often used for routine or recurring tasks, is a Task Safety Analysis (TSA), which involves completing a pre-printed checklist.

Professionalism and Housekeeping

One important part of safety and accident prevention is good housekeeping. We seldom think about it, but many unsafe conditions can be corrected before they result in injury. Good housekeeping is a necessity for a safe job site. When rubbish is allowed to accumulate on the job site or in the shop, it gets in the way and makes operations more dangerous. Time may also be lost if you just move rubbish from one place to another instead of using proper bins or disposal procedures.

A clean work environment also leads to pride in workmanship. An unorganized work area can slow your production and looks unprofessional. Keeping your work area clean and organized has many positive attributes. Some handy work area hints include:

• Before starting a project, remove unnecessary tools and equipment from your work area.
• Plan your work so tools needed for one task transition smoothly to the next.
• Place tools conveniently and slightly away from your immediate work area to avoid crowding.
• Never place tools inside equipment, as loose tools can cause damage or be forgotten.
• Remove tools and materials that are no longer required as you work.
• Use the correct tool for the job and never use damaged tools or equipment.
• Do not eat at your workbench; grease and crumbs can cause equipment failure.
• Clean up spills immediately to prevent slips and falls.
• Dispose of scrap material regularly in designated recycling or waste areas.
• At the end of the day, clean up so you can begin the next job safely and efficiently.

Role of the Workers’ Compensation Board: Investigate, Inspect, Educate, and Compensate

Workers’ Compensation Boards (WCB) are independent agents that enforce provincial mandates in the area of workers’ health and safety and compensation. WorkSafe BC is the agent for WCB in British Columbia. We will talk more about this later but for now here is the link to the WorkSafeBC website.

WorkSafeBC is the agent for WCB in British Columbia, and fulfills its mandate in four key ways:

1. Inspecting and assessing workplaces for safety and health concerns.
2. Investigating injury claims and workplace incidents.
3. Educating employers and employees and, when necessary, assessing penalties.
4. Compensating workers for time lost due to injury.

Workers’ Compensation Boards have the legislative authority to assess penalties for violations of health and safety regulations. The employer is ultimately held responsible for the actions of their workers and supervisors, although this does not relieve workers or supervisors of their responsibilities under the regulations. Both workers and supervisors can be held liable for the penalties prescribed under legislation.

Under the legislation, through its officers, the board is responsible for inspecting places of employment. Subsequently the board may issue orders and directions specifying the means for preventing injuries and industrial diseases.

Officers of the WCB are responsible for investigating accidents and the causes of industrial diseases, for assisting and advising employers and employees in the development of industrial health and safety programs, and for educating persons employed in industry about industrial health and safety.

Costs of Accidents and Injuries

The direct costs of an injury are the easiest to see and understand. These costs include emergency room and doctor visits, medical bills, medicines, rehabilitation, and lost wages. These direct costs are covered by a company’s insurance.

Indirect costs of an injury are often overlooked. These costs can amount to up to four times the direct cost of the injury. Indirect costs include administrative time dealing with the injury and medical care, loss of production, raises in premiums, replacing the injured employee’s lost hours of employment by hiring another employee, loss of reputation and confidence in employees and clients, unwanted media attention, and more.

Many projects use a company’s accident history or incident rate during the tender process and compare it to the other potential bidders when deciding which company to select. A higher rate of incidents may mean loss of a bid and, therefore, loss of work.

WCB Assessment and Penalty Costs

Every employer in British Columbia is issued a fee assessment to cover all of WorkSafeBC’s operating costs. Assessments pay for inspections of the work site, for the training of workers, and for the direct costs of job site injuries.

It’s important that you do not cause your employer to be charged and fined for infractions of the regulations. An employee who takes an unsafe shortcut on the job to save two minutes may end up costing their employer a lot of money. When the assessment goes up, it goes up for everyone on the payroll. In some cases, it can price a company out of business.

New and young workers have the highest accident rates. They’re often eager to please and try to get a job done hastily. You can help yourself and your employer by practising safe working habits, ensuring that you are trained properly, and demonstrating a good safety attitude on the job site.

Visit Top 7 Dangers for Young Workers on the WorkSafeBC (2016), website.

Self-Test A-1.1: Describe the Causes and Results of Accidents

Complete Self-Test A-1.1 and check your answers.

References

BC Industry Training Authority. (2019). Piping trades apprenticeship program: Perform safety related functions—Level 1 harmonized [Binder]. Crown Publications, Queen’s Printer for British Columbia. https://www.crownpub.bc.ca/Product/Details/7960000260_S

Camosun College. (n.d.). Line A: Safe work practices. BCcampus. https://collection.bccampus.ca/textbook/tQtm8KNK/

WorkSafeBC. (2006, October 19). The hearing video [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/mbwElB6uVuU

WorkSafeBC. (2010, June 17). Understanding hazards and risks [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/aRvULYpobms

WorkSafeBC. (2016, September 17). Know the hazards. https://www.worksafebc.com/en/health-safety/education-training-certification/young-new-worker/know-hazards

Media Attributions

All figures are sourced from Industry Training Authority (2019) and/or Camosun College (2019) and are used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) licence unless otherwise noted. Images copyrighted by SkilledTradedBC/BC Industry Training Authority are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

• GHS-pictogram-flamme/EPS file flamme.eps from UNECE web site converted with ImageMagick convert and with potrace, edited and flame redrawn in inkscape, from Wikimedia Commons, is in the public domain. From: Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS) pictogram for flammable substances
• Hardhat by ZeeChow from Pixabay is used under the Pixabay Content License.
• Construction, Building by Mohamed_hassan from Pixabay is used under the Pixabay Content License
• Construction site by Nikguy from Pixabay is used under the Pixabay Content License.