What Workplace Risks Will You Accept?

In the water and sewer industry, all job sites, plants and facilities have their hazards. Those hazards can include trenches, chemical spills, fall hazards, confined spaces, equipment failure and many others.

Employees who work around these hazards on a regular basis and can become comfortable to a certain degree. We call this complacency. Being complacent sets employees up for failure. This necessitates the question: What are you willing to accept to get the job done?

When employees walk past a hazard without addressing it, the hazard becomes accepted. Employees are then choosing to put themselves and others at risk.

Examples of walking past a hazard include:

• The trench isn’t dug properly – “No one else seems to care.”
• An employee on the top step of a ladder – “He does this all the time.”
• An employee isn’t tied off – “He’ll be okay; it’s only for a minute.”
• The employee isn’t wearing PPE – “It’s a hot day. He’ll be alright.”
• Lockout/tagout wasn’t done properly – “He knows what he is doing.”
• A respirator cartridge is cracked – “It will be all right for one more use.”
• The fall arrest system is damaged – “It was OK the last time I used it.”
• Someone’s close to the excavator – “The operator will see him.”
• The manhole cover is missing – “Someone will take care of it.”

When no one speaks up and these hazards aren’t corrected, they become normal. Soon they’re just a part of the day. When employees allow hazards to go unaddressed, they send a message that they are OK with it, and others will follow suit. New employees will then begin to accept hazards as just a normal part of the work environment.

If you want a strong safety culture, employees need to feel free to speak up when there are hazards. They need to see leadership taking hazards seriously too. When an employee does speak up and is more or less dismissed, that employee might start to accept hazards as normal and will no longer feel free to speak up. Supervisors need to take actions to correct the hazards or at least provide guidance to avoid the hazard until it can be made safe. Employees should feel free to correct hazards as a team and not just work around them.

A strong safety culture is built one moment at a time when all personnel involved address potential hazards daily. Each time a hazard is corrected, that builds a momentum that everyone can get behind. When walking past hazards becomes the norm, the battle is much tougher.

Ask yourself and the crews before each job begins to look for hazards that need to be addressed and come up with solutions together. Employees should trust that the employer cares and will do what it takes to create a safe working environment. Actions speak much louder than procedures from a manual.