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Workplaces today are extremely safe compared to what people had to endure generations ago. This is in large part because of the increased focus employers have put on workplace safety. Employers made this effort for a variety of reasons including regulatory pressure, the best interests of their employees, and of course, the fact that a safe workplace is a more profitable workplace. Despite all the great strides that have been made, many workplaces are still quite hazardous. The following 10 workplace safety mistakes illustrate just how far many industries still have to go. They can also help spur ideas for where improvements can be made in your facility. 1. Using Ladders Improperly One of the most common and most dangerous workplace safety mistakes is failing to use a ladder properly. People make many ladder-related mistakes in the workplace, all of which can be devastating. The following are just a few of the more common examples: Unsteady Ladders - If you don't take the time to properly steady the ladder when setting it up, it could easily slide out while you're on it, causing serious injuries. Leaning from Ladders - When working on a ladder, you should never reach off to the left or right as that can throw the center of balance off, which could cause the ladder to fall. Using Objects as a Ladder - Using scaffolding, chairs, stools, or other objects to reach high areas can be dangerous. These things aren't meant for climbing the same way a ladder is. Climbing too High on Ladders - One should never step onto the upper rungs of a ladder. Depending on how the ladder is placed, even several rungs down can be unstable. 2. Lack of Visual Communication The noise in many workplaces can be quite deafening at times, which can make it difficult to communicate. When it comes to safety, communication is essential. This is why it is so important to have visual communication options in any loud workplace. Visual communication can come in many forms including

SEO Checklist: 7 Deadly Mistakes to Avoid

I read an interesting article today about safety by Mari-len De Guzman on Cos-Mag.com, an occupational safety e-magazine for Canadian manufacturers. At the CSSE (or, Canadian Society of Safety Engineering) conference in Niagara Falls this week, Los Alamos National Laboratory safety expert, Todd Conklin, spoke about how many manufacturing and industrial companies look at safety issues. He pointed out that, rather than continually blame operator-error for most failures and safety problems, it is more systemic, stating that: workers get hurt when they find themselves in situations where it's hard to be safe and easy to get hurt. With that in mind, he offered several potential causes for failure or safety incidents and ways to combat them. First, he said that humans make mistakes, so he advised that it is important to anticipate those potential mistakes and have several levels of defensive safety measures. Next, he suggested that companies should anticipate that unforeseeable events can happen, and WILL happen, so employers and safety managers need to keep this in mind. Learning is another tip Conklin pointed out. Whenever something bad happens, the best defense next time is to learn as much as we can from the event. We can learn many things, like defenses, unsafe speeds, too much load, proximity to dangerous equipment or products, etc. Finally, he also advised managers to approach safety or failure issues (and the operators involved) with caution. He warned that being positive and asking things in a proactive manner can give a much better reply or response, as follows: Instead of asking a worker, "what have you done, now?" ask them, "how do we set this up so failure doesn't happen again." By asking the right question, employers can get a more operational-centric answer. I really thought this was great info. It might seem like common sense to some, safety matters and needs to be one step ahead of the production line. I also more or less agree with Con

When working on construction sites or other places with high heights, one of the most dangerous situations is when someone drops something, or an item is accidently knocked off an edge. These items can get up a lot of speed, which can be devastating to anyone in the area below. For this reason, falling objects safety must always be taken extremely seriously. Many companies make the mistake of only focusing on the actions of the people on the ground. Having them wear hard hats when below a work area, for example. While this is important, it is not nearly enough. Another common mistake is assuming that the only people who are at risk are those who are directly under the worksite. The reality is, however, that a falling object that hits something on the way down can be sent flying in any direction, exposing people in the surrounding area to significant danger. Sadly, this is what happened at a New Jersey construction site. A worker was 50 stories up on a building when he accidently dropped his tape measure. It fell down, striking another piece of equipment before it hit a worker who was talking to someone in a truck some distance away. The individual was taken to the hospital, where he died from the injuries. You can read more about this sad story HERE. While terribly unfortunate, this event can show that if something as simple as a tape measure can become deadly when it is falling, imagine the dangers of objects like hammers or bricks or other large items. With this in mind, consider implementing the following five strategies to help improve the falling objects safety for your company. Many of these things can help make immediate improvements that may actually save someone's life.

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A lot has been said about agility and the need for enterprises looking to innovate and disrupt to build agility. Agility, at the same time, also gets confused with the process of scrum. Small and large teams get enamored with the idea of scrum and mistake the process with the state of being agile. This is often more detrimental to the enterprise and can often create more process and not enough real agility. What is Agility Agility is the efficiency with which an enterprise executes and delivers on its objectives and goals. Agility is the ability to react to changes in goals, feedback from customers and shifts in strategy. Agility, from the outside, looks like a predictable stream of value delivered by the enterprise that matches and exceeds the needs of the customer. Organizational agility requires agility at multiple levels within the enterprise to drive the insights that can channel and align the efforts of the entire organization by leveraging data and information to make quick and informed decisions. Business Agility Business and customer-facing employees need to achieve "Business Agility". This is the ability of these employees to react to business critical in real time if needed and have access to the latest information at any decision point. Business Agility enables users to reduce the latency or lag between a need in the market or of the customers and when they are able to service the need. Decision Agility Analysts and data scientists creating the insights to drive decisions require "Decision Agility" i.e the ability to easily discover, leverage and use data for analytics and insights through any and multiple tools and channels. Analysts and data scientists need to produce insights that reduce the time and effort required to convert data into information and insights that are required to drive key decisions and actions. Development Agility Application developers and data engineers need the ability to easily generate, collect, access and deli

Safety Myths We Could All Live Without Safety MythsI'm going to level with you today: There's a lot, and a mean a metric ton, of misinformation when it comes to safety in the workplace. The more experience you have, the more and more you discover which of the things you've been told actually seem to hold up to the action of a real workplace, and which advice becomes clearly idealistic and less useable. That said, why can't we just skip past the clutter? Why do myths about the nature of safety and accident prevention continue to circulate when experienced practitioners know them to be complete bologna? To be honest, I can't answer that, but hopefully what I can do is more useful; in this article, we're going to go over some common workplace safety myths and dissect them so that, with a whole lot of luck, they won't leave anyone's lips ever again. Accidents Happen Safety Myths AccidentsFirst of all, yes, accidents do happen… but the statement itself is dismissive, and suggests that some things are just out of our control. The problem with this sentiment is twofold. First of all, it's a slippery slope: If you decide one thing is out of your control, it's easier to accept that another thing might be as well. Before you know it, you're leaving too much up to chance and not enough up to your problem solving skills. The second problem is that the idea that accidents just "happen" of their own accord is silly and untrue. There is always something you can do, and you should always be actively improving your safety by finding these things as they come along. One counter example to this that people sometimes come up with is a case in which an employee does something really boneheaded and gets themselves into a dangerous situation. "Isn't that kind of out of my control?" one might ask. Actually, there are two possible situations here: 1. The worker deliberately put themselves in harm's way for some unknown reason. In this case, a resu

Make Construction Safety a Priority Everyone knows that construction sites can be very dangerous. The more you know about the types of danger you will face, however, will help you to take steps toward keeping everyone safe. Look over the following 10 safety facts and see what you can learn about how to improve the overall safety of your facility. In addition to using this information to help you to make safety improvements, you can also show these items to the workers at any site so they can be more aware. Some of these facts may surprise people, and cause them to be more aware of their surroundings. According to OSHA, "Nearly 6.5 million people work at approximately 252,000 construction sites across the nation on any given day. The fatal injury rate for the construction industry is higher than the national average in this category for all industries." 10 Tips to Improve Construction Safety Fact #1 - Losing your Load On construction sites people use machines to lift and move all sorts of things on a regular basis. Whether it is lifting wood or metal beams, or you are digging out dirt to prepare to lay a foundation, this is an essential part of most jobs. The vast majority of times this type of activity goes very smoothly and the jobs are completed without incident. The fact is, however, that having loads come loose while in transit is actually a leading cause of injury on construction sites. You need to keep in mind that even if you don't lose the entire load, people can be severely injured from even one thing falling out of a crane or back hoe. With this in mind, people working on site need to know to stay well away from this machinery, and the machine operators need to know to avoid moving items when people are nearby. Fact #2 - Entering and Leaving Heavy Machinery Another safety issue related to working with heavy machinery is related to operators getting on and off of the rigs that they will be working on. While this is something that they of

Ok, let's be honest here. Unless you are a safety professional, or you work closely with safety professionals, the chances are that no one has really told you anything about pipe marking, right? But for those of us lucky enough to work in this industry, it quickly becomes all too clear that there is an endless amount of information available about this very narrow topic. Unfortunately, about 99% of the information that people learn about pipe marking is just reiterating the standards and regulations that are put out by OSHA and other regulatory bodies. Now, make no mistake, this information is absolutely critical to learn and follow. The fact is, however, that there are A LOT of other things that someone who works with pipe marking should know. We've put together some helpful tips, tricks, information, and advice that covers a wide range of pipe marking related topics to help ensure your pipe marking strategies are as effective as possible. If you have any other 'secrets' of pipe marking that you don't see here, please contact us below so we can help pass them along in the future. Choose Your Materials Wisely Everyone knows that you can't just use the normal label materials that are basically paper with a little glue on the back, which you might buy at Office Depot. There are, however, lots of different types of industrial labeling materials out there, and picking the right one for the right area is essential. Here are several essential points to be aware of: Pipe Materials - Did you know that normal vinyl labels can cause corrosion on pipes made of nickel and stainless steel? If you have this type of piping, make sure you opt for labels that are identified as 'low halide' to avoid this potentially disastrous risk. Know the Weather Risks - When labeling outdoor piping, you need to keep weathering in mind. Most label materials are water-proof, but the constant change in temperature, humidity, wind, and more can really be rough on pipe markings

When it comes to safety, we all want to do our best and keep our workers out of harm's way. However, wanting and doing are two different things, and governing safety bodies like OSHA are there to make sure that the "doing" part gets done. In fact, OSHA can come inspect a factory or workfloor without notice. While they aren't trying to trick you, they do want to make sure that people who aren't following the rules are caught a bit off guard so that anything that needs fixed can get done before someone gets hurt. In general, if you're doing what you're supposed to and following the rules (and keeping on top of recent updates) you've got nothing to worry about. However, here are a few things you can do to make sure that your visit goes over smoothly and that you get a stellar review from the organization. Do Your Own Inspections One of the easiest ways to prepare is to do your own inspection or have someone come in and do one for you. The point is that it can be easier to catch things and have a unique perspective when actually walking through and putting yourself in the mindset of someone outside of the company, whose sole concern is safety. This kind of thoroughness will trump looking through a safety checklist and thinking "yep, did that one" every time. The other great thing about a mock inspection is that it will condition/get your workers used to having a third party evaluate them and watch them at work, which brings us to… Prepare Your Employees One problem that can come up throughout the course of an OSHA evaluation is employee behavior. Sometimes, being watched can be nervewracking, and for others it can be insulting to have someone glancing in their direction and scribbling something down on a clipboard. In your mock inspections, you can let people know that it's nothing to worry about and that in the event someone does come in to observe, they can just continue working as normal because they're doing everything right already. Ev