The costs incurred when employees are injured on the job are difficult for any business to handle. Not surprisingly, there has been considerable study and universal acceptance of the notion that preventing injuries is worth expending resources to accomplish. One would think that something as reasonable as a wearing safety vests would be a simple thing to introduce to the workforce, but that is not always so.
For the most part, workers have come to expect their work environment to be risk free, without their having to participate in any way. What the people hired to reduce these problems are actually charged with doing is identifying vulnerabilities, developing the means to mitigate them, and create a strategy to address the issues. The leadership is ultimately responsible for deciding what will be done.
Human beings seem hardwired to believe in an irrational sense of indestructibility, or at least their behavior would indicate that to be the case. How else could one explain that people engage in such a wide variety of thrilling and dangerous events, voluntarily, in the pursuit of excitement and happiness. Rides at amusement parks are engineered to draw as close to the limits of human physical tolerance as possible.
The most popular theme park rides are those which include great falls, dizzying heights, high speed turns or some combination thereof. Popular sports include physical stresses that can tear muscles and break bones, impacts that can result in concussions and even some with a goal of physically debilitating the opponent. Fans spend a great deal of money to watch and participate vicariously.
Not all of the rejection is predicated on spite, people have a natural feeling that the kinds of injuries and mishaps targeted in the work environment require are prevented by common sense. The idea they have become the focus of attention is due to recurrence is not accepted as a normal event, but the result of buffoonery at some level. The preventive measure is then sensed as punishment for the incompetence of others.
Humans are also not completely immune from the biological tendency to demonstrate strength and courage in order to impress the opposite sex. Certainly humans do not all engage in near fatal contests of strength to woo their mates, yet similar trends are existent. The urge to demonstrate a sort of macho strength continues throughout life, the cautious are not always applauded.
All of this transferred to the work environment is the hurdle that professionals must overcome in reducing risk in the workplace. The situation is difficult enough without the added burden of people deliberately ignoring the solutions developed for their protection. Some personal protective gear has overcome the stigma, such as construction helmets, but not many.
The pathway to getting protective equipment, polices and procedures integrated into normal, daily operations is long and complicated. Justification and statistics do little to win the hearts and minds of the intended beneficiaries. The use of safety vests to protect workers, despite the obvious benefits proven through mishap statistics, is still difficult to get employees to consistently accept as a means of preventing tragic injuries or deaths.
For the most part, workers have come to expect their work environment to be risk free, without their having to participate in any way. What the people hired to reduce these problems are actually charged with doing is identifying vulnerabilities, developing the means to mitigate them, and create a strategy to address the issues. The leadership is ultimately responsible for deciding what will be done.
Human beings seem hardwired to believe in an irrational sense of indestructibility, or at least their behavior would indicate that to be the case. How else could one explain that people engage in such a wide variety of thrilling and dangerous events, voluntarily, in the pursuit of excitement and happiness. Rides at amusement parks are engineered to draw as close to the limits of human physical tolerance as possible.
The most popular theme park rides are those which include great falls, dizzying heights, high speed turns or some combination thereof. Popular sports include physical stresses that can tear muscles and break bones, impacts that can result in concussions and even some with a goal of physically debilitating the opponent. Fans spend a great deal of money to watch and participate vicariously.
Not all of the rejection is predicated on spite, people have a natural feeling that the kinds of injuries and mishaps targeted in the work environment require are prevented by common sense. The idea they have become the focus of attention is due to recurrence is not accepted as a normal event, but the result of buffoonery at some level. The preventive measure is then sensed as punishment for the incompetence of others.
Humans are also not completely immune from the biological tendency to demonstrate strength and courage in order to impress the opposite sex. Certainly humans do not all engage in near fatal contests of strength to woo their mates, yet similar trends are existent. The urge to demonstrate a sort of macho strength continues throughout life, the cautious are not always applauded.
All of this transferred to the work environment is the hurdle that professionals must overcome in reducing risk in the workplace. The situation is difficult enough without the added burden of people deliberately ignoring the solutions developed for their protection. Some personal protective gear has overcome the stigma, such as construction helmets, but not many.
The pathway to getting protective equipment, polices and procedures integrated into normal, daily operations is long and complicated. Justification and statistics do little to win the hearts and minds of the intended beneficiaries. The use of safety vests to protect workers, despite the obvious benefits proven through mishap statistics, is still difficult to get employees to consistently accept as a means of preventing tragic injuries or deaths.
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