Healthy Safety Attitude

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You know your job. You have the ability to do it well. But do you have the attitude required to do the job both well and safely?

There’s no hiding attitude from others. If you have a poor attitude about safety, you may be able to hide it from yourself, but it will show up in everything you say and everything you do. Some workers seem to have the attitude that safety rules were made to be broken—especially when no one is looking. Even those who are hard-working, exacting, and conscientious about every other aspect of their jobs can have a poor safety attitude. They take shortcuts not because they are lazy, but because they want to get the work done more quickly.

Other workers think that not complying with the rules won’t cause too much of a problem if they perceive that a risk is small. They take chances, and this leads to accidents. These individuals don’t take safety seriously— until it is too late. These are the people who say, "Don’t worry. I’ve done it this way lots of times” —right before they fall flat on their faces.

Most of us don’t intend to walk around with a bad safety attitude—or even realize it when we have one. We think that our last couple of accidents simply "happened" to us

Luckily, attitudes are not permanent states of mind—they can be changed. Here’s how you can carry through with a good—even great—attitude concerning safety:

• Keep your mind focused on the job at hand. Put aside for the moment any personal problems that have been bothering you so that you can watch for hazards and accomplish what you have set out to do.
• Tell yourself that you will not let nearby noises or conversations bother your concentration and prevent you from doing the job safely.
• Don’t give in to pressure from your co-workers to be unsafe. You don’t have to join in horseplay, take shortcuts, or participate in cover-ups. Instead, take the lead in behaving in an adult and responsible manner.
• Report all accidents and near accidents—even though they may seem unimportant at the time.
• Try to understand why an accident occurred, to help you avoid making the same mistake twice.
• Practice the techniques you have learned for lifting and other methods of doing the job in a safe fashion.
• Practice good housekeeping. Keep your work area free of clutter. Clean up spills.
• Be considerate of your co-workers. Don’t do anything that would endanger them. In fact, go a step farther and remind co-workers about safety. Say something when they forget to put on equipment to protect themselves or when they ignore the rules.
• Take the time to remind your family about staying safe at their jobs, in school, or in the home.

After following all these suggestions for a short while, you will have developed a proper safety attitude, one that others can and will respect and even try to imitate. But even better than that, you’ll feel good about yourself and will be able to do productive work and stay safe at the same time.

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