Employee safety away from work can have a significant impact on the work place such as employee time away from work (for their own injuries and time away to care for loved ones). Lost time is lost productivity and may mean that others need to fill in for those who are away.
One way to engage your employees in work safety is to promote off-the-job safety awareness.
Let them know how much you value their work contributions by letting them know that you care about their safety and their loved ones' safety away from work.
From the National Safety Council (NSC):
Here are the top causes of unintentional injury and death in homes and communities from 2015:
The NSC recently published an article on Prescription Drug Abuse Epidemic: Painkillers Driving Addition, Overdose, and it reports that the number one cause of unintentional death in America is currently caused from opioid pain medication, and 22,000 people die annually. It also went on to note that in 2006, the estimated total cost in the United States of non-medical use of prescription opioids was $53.4 billion, of which $42 billion (79%) was attributable to lost productivity.
There are calendars available that promote safety and emergency-preparedness activities throughout the year. These calendars focus on the events for each month and provide information and resources for each topic. The calendars can be used to plan the messaging that you want to share with your laboratory employees and then decide the best way to share the information, such as:
There are many resources available for off-the-job safety:
Help keep your laboratory employees safe at work and at home. It really only takes a few minutes to share this information, and it can provide many rewards. If you have some interesting tips or methods on how your laboratory promotes off-the-job safety, let me know so that I can share with others.