Fall Safety Stand-Down Strategies: Elevate Your Worker Involvement

This week is the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) fall safety stand-down, and OSHA is encouraging employers to be creative about engaging employees in a discussion of fall hazards and fall protection. So when you’re planning your stand-down activities, look for ways to engage workers that go beyond your usual toolbox talk.

Here are some ideas.

Elevate Worker Involvement

Get workers involved, and make your participation in the national fall safety stand-down memorable with these suggestions:

• Tweet about it. Create snappy fall protection messages and handy links with the hashtag #StandDown4Safety, and encourage workers to retweet them and to become involved in the larger conversation about fall safety.
• Promote public events. OSHA is creating a clickable index of free public events connected to the fall safety stand-down. If there’s one in your area, let workers know about it, and encourage them to attend. Find the list at https://www.osha.gov/StopFallsStandDown/calendar.html.
• Turn your quiz into a quiz show. After you present a safety session, have a comprehension quiz—but divide workers into teams, and run your quiz quiz-show style.
• Have a fall protection fashion show. Can your workers walk the runway in their fashionable fall protection? Show off features like snug-fitting harnesses, front and side D-rings, and different types of buckles, discussing what each does and why your company has chosen one over another.
• Connect across the country. If you have different locations, get workers connected via Skype or FaceTime^® to solve fall protection puzzles whose clues are available at different work sites.
• Conduct a group fall protection inspection. Have everyone inspect their fall protection gear together. If anyone finds an issue with his or her gear, have him or her share with the rest, and make sure everyone can identify the issue and respond appropriately.
• Reward compliance. If you catch workers using their fall protection equipment or safe work practices correctly this week, offer an immediate, tangible, slightly silly reward—like a pack of Smarties^® candy or chocolate coins.
• Create a “fall-themed” playlist. There’s plenty of music that can keep “falls” and “falling” at the forefront of workers’ awareness. Make a playlist for your event that’s all about falls and falling, even if it’s not quite the kind of falling you’re talking about. Start with “Fall On Me” by R.E.M.; “The Boys of Fall” by Kenny Chesney; “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis Presley, UB40, Haley Reinhardt, and many more; “Don’t Fall in Love with a Dreamer” by Kenny Rogers; “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” by B.J. Thomas; “Fall Down” by Toad the Wet Sprocket; and “All Fall Down” by Emmylou Harris with George Jones. Have workers make additions from their own playlists.
• Think outside the workplace. Remind workers that fall hazards at home can be as dangerous as fall hazards at work—and that rules about ladder safety, working on roofs and scaffolds, and other fall hazards can protect workers and the people they care about when they’re off work, too.

For more suggestions on making training memorable, visit Safety.BLR.com^®.