Learn from Accidents, Expert Urges

Hernani Veloso Neto of the University of Porto, Portugal, published research on the subject of accident prevention strategies in the March issue of the International Journal of Human Factors and Ergonomics. He identified three obstacles that stand in the way of treating workplace accidents as a source of what he calls "useable knowledge."

• The first challenge is fundamental structural barriers. These are related to organizational issues, such as whether news about accidents is disseminated beyond those immediately affected by the incident.

• The second obstacle is "inter-individual" barriers, for example, communications between line managers and staff.

• The third challenge are barriers caused by the behaviors and response of those directly involved in the accident.

The key to overcoming these challenges and unlocking the door to improved accident prevention, says Veloso Neto, is a knowledge system that focuses on internal and external case studies and encourages the reporting of accidents, causes, and outcomes across the entire organization.

"To learn from accident experiences, organizations must create mechanisms to foster knowledge from the onset and to elicit changes based on that information," Veloso Neto concludes. He says if such resources are not exploited, barriers will remain in place and accidents will be repeated.

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Knowledge: The Key to Preventing Accidents

Why is knowledge about accident prevention so important? Here are 12 good reasons—all from OSHA fatal workplace injury reports:

• A grocery store worker died from injuries after tripping and falling from loose flooring.
• An employee died when a storage tank he was cutting exploded.
• A worker died after vehicle crashed during icy road conditions.
• A cable service worker died after falling from a ladder.
• An employee died while working in a confined space at a crude oil refinery.
• An employee crushed and killed by conveyor belt rollers undergoing maintenance.
• A worker killed after being caught in saw machine at cabinetry facility.
• A worker died after falling 30 feet while unloading tools from forklift.
• A worker was struck in head and killed by piece of metal while operating lathe.
• An employee killed by falling equipment during unloading operations
• A worker was killed when nail from a nail gun struck him in the eye.
• An employee died from head injuries after falling off scaffolding.

If these employees had proper knowledge, their accident could have been avoided and the fatality prevented. Multiply these incidents by thousands upon thousands of nonfatal accidents, and you see why training and increased knowledge about safety is so vital in the workplace.

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We Can Help

BLR’s Safety Meetings Library provides the perfect materials for conducting frequent and engaging training on a broad range of safety and health issues. This cost-effective resource provides the safety meeting content, as well as supporting handouts, quizzes, posters, and safety slogans.

All told, the CD provides you with more than 400 ready-to-train meetings on more than 100 key safety topics—a shrewd investment in this time of tight safety budgets. In addition to the meetings’ supplemental quizzes and handouts, you also get relevant regulations (OSHA’s CFR 29), a listing of the most common safety violations cited by OSHA, and case studies of actual OSHA cases and their outcomes.

Safety Meetings Library lets you choose from a variety of training approaches, including:

• Mandatory—Sessions that are OSHA-required
• Comprehensive—Sessions with broadest coverage of a topic
• 7-Minute—Short, simple, targeted sessions to fit tight schedules
• Initial—A session used as introductory training on a topic
• Refresher—Sessions that follow up on or reinforce previous training
• Tool Box Talk—More informal reinforcement of a topic
• PowerPoint®—Graphic presentations for comprehensive initial or refresher training
• Hands-on—A session in which there are training activities
• Spanish—Including Spanish language handouts and quizzes coordinated with English sessions

You can get a preview of the program by using the links below. But for the best look, we suggest a no-cost, no-obligation trial. Just let us know and we’ll arrange it for you.