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There are “events” that can cause lost-time injuries amongst your team members all the time

Routine maintenance on equipment is delayed. An operator is injured when he activates it and a flywheel flies off. Why did the accident occur?

A machine guard is put back carelessly. An operator inserts some out-of-specification material which is ejected by the machine past the wrongly-fitted guard. It flies out to strike the worker. What should have been done to avoid such an occurrence?

Someone cross-threads the stopper to a container of hazardous chemical. The next worker to pick it up fails to check the container and is splashed and burned by the chemical as the stopper slips off. What caused the injury?

Events like these occur in our personal lives too. We take short cuts, through over-confidence or complacency. Who hasn't used a metal handled knife to get toast out of the toaster? Maybe your son or daughter has watched you do it. If that toaster is energized it can burn, maim or kill. Who hasn't scratched just a tiny hole in the frost on their car's windscreen before hurrying off to work on a frosty morning? Yet the frost on the side window can hide that delivery truck that has just turned the corner, as you glide out onto the road.

There are events in all our lives that can hurt us. There is always
a chain of events that leads up to the injury—a chain that can be broken at any point by human intervention. When an injury results, we can blame unforeseeable events, we can blame
the weather, the equipment, we can blame someone else, OR WE CAN

TAKE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR WORKING AND LIVING SAFELY.