Silver Lining Safety - Safety Bytes

We often think about workplaces as being unsafe. But is that reality? Is being in a workplace more dangerous than being in the public or at home? This podcast will compare safety in the workplace versus safety in public and home.

OSHA recently published a letter of interpretation on the use of headphones in the workplace. In this podcast I’ll talk about this letter, as well as the implications it has for other sources of music.

While I often speak about safety and safe workplaces, I realized I never defined either of these terms or what they mean to me. Since this podcast series is about workplace safety, I think it’s time to tackle this fundamental but challenging topic.

OSHA’s use of the general duty clause can be subjective. It requires employers to provide each employee with a workplace that’s free from recognized hazards that cause or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm. For OSHA to prove such a condition exists, there are four elements they must establish for a successful citation. This podcast will cover these elements.

Did you know OSHA can issue a citation for any serious hazard, even if it isn’t covered by a specific OSHA standard? OSHA can even require training in circumstances where OSHA doesn’t even have a training standard. This podcast will cover OSHA’s general duty clause – its most comprehensive standard covering workplace safety.

Safety talks are often used in organizations to enhance the safety program. Too often, however, they’re nothing more than busy work for the supervisors who read them and the employees who listen to them - resulting in no improvement in workplace safety. This podcast will help you make safety talks a positive addition to your safety program instead of a wasted opportunity.

Some employers feel that if their employees aren’t exposed to a hazard, they can’t be given an OSHA citation. This isn’t true, however, in a multiple-employer situation. In this podcast, we’ll review OSHA’s Multiple Employer Citation Policy – the process for determining which employers can receive citations on multi-employer worksites.

At this time of year, many businesses are establishing annual goals. When it comes to safety, however, too many businesses rely on lagging indicators. In this podcast, we’ll discuss leading and lagging indicators and provide you with suggestions to identify the best indicators to achieve your safety objectives.

Did you know that almost half of carpenters are injured by a nail gun in the first three years of training? What if there was a simple way to cut pneumatic nail gun or pneumatic stapler injuries by more than half? There is! In this podcast I’ll talk about how you can reduce the potential for pneumatic nail and staple gun injuries, whether in the workplace or at home.

Did you know humans really can’t multitask? Even if you think you can safely text, listen to podcasts, watch TV, or review emails while driving, you can’t. This isn’t multitasking; it’s having your mind switch focus between two tasks and your performance on both suffers.

This podcast will discuss how the workplace often requires multitasking and switching focus, and how it causes workplace productivity and safety to suffer.