‘Safety Dance’
Evan Zabawski | TLT From the Editor September 2012
“We can dance. We can dance. Everybody look at your hands.”
I didn’t see the gloves as protection, I saw the hands that needed protecting.
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VISITING CUSTOMERS HAS PUT ME THROUGH DOZENS OF SITE ORIENTATIONS, and I have noticed these safety programs fall into two distinct categories. Basically, the workers either strongly embrace the program, or they simply appear to be going through the motions.
This epiphany hit me after visiting a site that had posters titled, “This is why I work safe,” displaying pictures of fellow employees’ family members engaged in various activities. Many sites have adopted some variance of a slogan that promotes everyone always going home safe, but for some reason these pictures of family members, either at home or at play, hit the mark a little stronger for me.
Previously I visited a nuclear power plant with a strict glove policy, to the point it was a disciplinary offense to be caught without a pair of suitable gloves on your person. Consequently, everywhere you looked you would see people walking around with a pair of gloves clipped to their belt. I am not sure this prevented any more hand injuries. People were being very compliant, but also very complacent. They followed the letter of the law but not the intent. They carried gloves everywhere, but rarely did I witness anyone actually wearing them in seemingly obligatory situations.
Visiting the latter site did put me in the habit of always carrying gloves, but it was the former site that convinced me to always wear them. I will also give some credit to the popular hit song “Safety Dance” by the Canadian group Men Without Hats.
The title of the song, which actually is a song about safety, albeit safety on the dance floor of clubs, made me realize that safety programs are like a dance. Either you are into the music and really dancing, or you are simply swaying to the beat.
Doing as the lyrics suggest, I looked at my hands and I didn’t see the gloves as protection. I saw the hands that needed protecting. I now see the hands that will hug my wife and pick up my kids when I get home at night, and that compels me to protect myself, not just for my sake but theirs as well.
When you really embrace safety in its truest form of self-preservation, you tend to take it home with you. I recently heard someone remark that they could tell which people in the neighborhood worked in the oil patch, since they were the ones wearing full PPE, not flip-flops, while mowing the grass. I tend to wear ear muffs, safety glasses, coveralls, gloves and steel-toed boots. As the song says, “We can dress real neat from our hats to our feet.”
Some people may not think that level of protection is required for such a routine task, and that’s because they are simply aware of safety, but don’t really believe in it. I agree that the chance of severe injury from mowing the grass may seem low, but I believe the extra minute putting on my PPE is worthwhile in avoiding that slim potential. I would hate to suffer a small cut, or in the worst case be blinded, from an errant pebble when I can easily protect myself.
Too often people assume the risk is too low to bother taking action. I think you’ll find taking reasonable precautions does, in fact, protect you from the most common injuries without becoming a major encumbrance. It’s like wearing a seatbelt; hopefully you never need it, but you do it anyway. It becomes so habitual that it feels wrong to even back your car out of the garage without wearing it.
So it’s time to stop simply swaying to the beat and start really dancing. Focus on yourself, but feel free to intervene with your friends, too. “Cause if your friends don’t dance, and if they don’t dance, well, they’re no friends of mine.”
Evan Zabawski, CLS, is the vice president of technical services for CAN-AK/IAS in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. You can reach him at ezabawski@can-ak.ca.