A recent article highlights how to change behaviors and mitigate hazards
In a recent article in Facility Safety Management magazine, UG2’s Manager of Safety & Operational Excellence, Adam Rabesa, shared his insights on the dangers of slips, trips, and falls in the workplace. In order to mitigate this hazard, it takes more than some reminders about grabbing on to handrails or putting up caution signs.
“How can we get facilities staff, tenants, and visitors to use more logical, deliberate thinking when it comes to safety?” he writes. “The first thing to do is acknowledge that it’s pretty much impossible to get people to change their daily habits — especially when ‘automated mode’ is built into our brains.”
Instead of asking people to change their way of thinking and moving, Rabesa notes that it’s better to put best practices in place that focus on processes, so people can still go through their daily activities, with much lower risk.
New Processes
Just as Rabesa does for every UG2 customer that he works with, he suggests multiple, easy ways to minimize the risk of slips and falls. His recommendations include the following:
- Restrict cell phone use while walking: Looking down at a phone when navigating through a space can cause anyone to be unaware of tripping risk. Rabesa suggests that facilities staff remind people to put their phones away, and that these reminders can help people adapt to new behaviors.
- Be smart about signage: Signs remind people about rules and safety, but simply putting up a long list isn’t likely to help. You need to create greater visibility and engagement, so design is important. Much like advertising, signs need to catch attention and cause enough recognition to change behavior. For example, Rabesa writes, if you’re in a cold climate, you could use a sign that changes color when it’s freezing to remind pedestrians of icy conditions.
- Use dollies when moving packages: For those who aren’t used to handling larger packages, a dolly can be an easy way to prevent tripping and falling risk. Rabesa suggests that mailroom personnel can determine when a dolly is needed and “loan” them out as needed.
- Implement building best practices: In addition to behavior changes like the ones above, making changes to a building, campus, or warehouse space can go a long way toward preventing falls. For example, make sure wide stairways have railings on both sides, not just one. Install metal grates that can capture debris and dirt, so they don’t become slick on an interior surface and cause a fall.
The combination of simple-to-implement behavior changes and safety practices with a few adjustments like grates and mats can increase your prevention efforts, says Rabesa.
Value of Analysis
Another important aspect of fall prevention is a job safety analysis, also known as a JSA or Hazard Assessment. If you’ve never done one of these before, take the time to go through a facility, including the outdoor spaces—like parking areas, entrances, sidewalks, and even green space—and consider risks with a critical, objective view. Pay particular attention to spaces where incidents have occurred in the past, even if they were minor.
Whenever there’s a change to the environment due to rebuild or modification, Rabesa recommends a re-examination of the JSA for potential, new hazards.
“When it comes to preventing slips, trips, and falls, understanding human mindsets is just as important as keeping walkways dry and free of debris,” he writes. “By combining tactics aimed at altering behaviors with practical safety techniques, you can dramatically reduce incidents and injuries, and help keep everyone in your facilities safe.”
For more information and insights, check out the full Facility Safety Management article and be sure to visit our blog for posts on safety and operations strategies that you might consider for your space.