Safety Engineering and Disaster Risk

Management

Chapter 2
Attitude Towards Safety

Presented By: Umesh Sukamani

 2.1 Attitude towards safety
A positive attitude towards safety makes the most of
company safety tools and training. When you take
safety seriously, you take advantage of the protections
available on the job. The safety procedures, equipment,
and information employers provide include:
Engineering controls such as fall protection
Work procedures such as fire prevention
Personal protective equipment such as safety glasses
and hard hats
Emergency planning and response programs
Safety information such as chemical labels
Training on how to do your job safely.

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 2.1 Attitude towards safety
5 Keys to Improving Worker Safety Attitude
1. Take Safety Seriously
2. Company Safety Tools and Training
3. Carelessness Is the Most Common Cause of
Workplace Accidents
4. Take a Positive Attitude Toward Safety
5. Look for Opportunities to Improve Workplace
Safety

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 2.1 Attitude towards safety
1. Take Safety Seriously
Every employee must take safety seriously in order
to:
Avoid accidents that can cause fires, explosions,
or other dangers
Avoid accidents that can cause job-related injuries
Avoid exposure to hazardous substances that can
lead to serious illness
Comply with OSHA safety and health regulations
Comply with company work rules, policies, and
procedures
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 2.1 Attitude towards safety
2. Company Safety Tools and Training
When you take safety seriously, you take advantage of the
protections available on the job. The safety procedures,
equipment, and information employers provide include:
 Engineering controls such as ventilation
 Work procedures such as lockout/tagout
 Personal protective equipment (PPE) such as gloves, hard
hats, and protective eyewear
 Emergency planning and response programs such as
alarms, evacuation plans, and eyewashes
 Safety information such as chemical labels and material
safety data sheets
 Training on how to do your job safely
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 2.1 Attitude towards safety
3. Carelessness Is the Most Common Cause of Workplace Accidents
Unsafe acts are often a factor in accidents. They result when people take
attitudes like these toward safety:
 Complacency. After performing a job many times without an accident,
you may believe you’re experienced enough to skip safety procedures or
steps. That’s exactly when an accident happens.
 Being upset or angry. You can’t let emotions get in the way of doing
your job correctly. Distraction can be dangerous.
 Fatigue. Being tired can slow down your physical and mental reactions,
causing your mind to wander.
 Recklessness. Taking chances with tools, machinery, chemicals, or work
procedures is foolish and dangerous.
 Being afraid to ask questions. Training and work procedures cover a lot
of ground—sometimes too much to remember. Always ask when you’re
not sure what to do or how to do it. It shows you’re smart enough to
know what you don’t know.

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 2.1 Attitude towards safety
4. Take a Positive Attitude Toward Safety
 Take personal responsibility for your own safety and that of your co-
workers.
 Pay attention to training.
 Follow every step in every job every time.
 Know and follow safety rules.
 Use required personal protective equipment.
 Give work your full attention.
 Keep an eye out for hazards. Always ask, “What could go wrong here?”
 Put your personal feelings and problems aside while you’re working.
 Urge your co-workers to follow safety procedures.
 Know what to do in an emergency.
 Ask questions about any procedure or precaution that’s not clear.
 Report any safety hazards you can’t fix.
 Save fooling around for your personal time.

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 2.1 Attitude towards safety
5. Look for Opportunities to Improve Workplace Safety
Demonstrate that you have the right attitude toward safety
by:
Volunteering for safety committees
Taking an active role in safety meetings and training
sessions
Proposing safety improvements through the suggestion
system
Cooperating with safety inspections and monitoring
Setting an example of a good safety attitude for others,
especially new employees
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 2.2 Attitude Survey
Attitude is a group of opinions, values and
dispositions to act associated with a particular
object or concept.

An assessment of the feelings of a population

toward a particular brand, product, or company.

Attitude surveys can be useful for identifying

latent markets, determining what demographics a
company should focus on to maintain or improve
safety, and measuring the market effect of
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announcements or events.
 2.2 Attitude Survey
Often an essential component of organizational training
and development, Employee Attitude surveys provide a
picture of your organization's needs.

These surveys can be used to solicit employee opinions

on a variety of issues such as the company's success in
communicating its mission to employees, or local issues
such as quality of the working environment.

These surveys often contain a series of multiple choice

items grouped along one or more dimensions of the
organization.
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 2.2 Attitude Survey
The types of items included in these surveys may concern
areas such as:
Creativity Innovation
Satisfaction Senior Management
Interpersonal Relations Functional Expertise
Compensation Ability to Listening
Customer Service Communication
Obtaining Results Analytical Thinking
Mentoring Strategic Leadership
Teamwork Adaptability
Staff Development Leadership
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 2.2 Attitude Survey
Benefits of using employee attitude surveys

Identify problems and issues

Assess your policies

Boost and maintain employee morale

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 2.2 Attitude Survey
Identify problems and issues
The employee attitude survey discloses how employees
feel towards the company and reveals the causes of
several problems, such as high absenteeism, fast
turnover, conflicts and disputes within the organization,
and low employee satisfaction.
From the online survey results, management can
determine the steps necessary to address those issues,
improve employee morale, and increase productivity.

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 2.2 Attitude Survey
Assess your policies
Going directly to the employees to ask what they think
can help management assess the results of past and
present activities, the impacts of certain decisions, and
the effectiveness of policies and practices.
Lessons can be extracted from the employees’ responses
to serve as springboards for future efforts on planning
and strategy development.

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 2.2 Attitude Survey
Boost and maintain employee morale
Employee attitude surveys provide information on the
sources of morale and guides management on how best to
motivate employees, stimulate dialogues, promote
commitment, and improve job satisfaction.
They also enable the company to respond promptly to
changing circumstances in the workforce and maintain
control by giving indications on how employees are
likely to react to any changes implemented.

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 2.3 Value of safety survey
It increases the employee participations in
safety activities. The results drawn from the
more safety minded employee are of real
value.
It gives the idea to the top level management
committee to plan new and effective programs.
These types of survey can point out the most
risky or accident happening equipment or
plants.
It forces the management to repair such
equipment. The survey shows the validity of
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various safety rules.
 2.3 Value of safety survey
It can help to review the safety rule book. Safety
survey helps employees to express their problems
and feeling without fear and favor.
After doing such survey, all of the workers can be
categorized into different groups according to the
level of their safety knowledge and different training
can be started as per their experience and knowledge.
The survey can help in accident investigations, plant
inspection, job analysis and cause of accident. Survey
can help to check the view of employees before
launching a new program, then there is high chance
of success.
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 2.4 Report from safety personal
Safety inspector
Workers’ safety committee
Union representative
First aid attendance
Foreman canvass
Sampling by personnel contact
Suggestion box
The safety inventory or questionnaire

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 2.4 Report from safety personal
Safety inspector
Full time safety inspector should be instructed to
write a report with day to day inspection and the
attitude of workers by asking many questions such as
the difficulties, risk at work, advantages and
disadvantages about the used plants and equipment.
The survey should be verbal since workers have no
time to answer the questions in written form which
may also disturb their work.
These questionnaires by the safety inspector should
not be done each day as it irritates the workers.
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 2.4 Report from safety personal
Workers’ safety committee
Workers’ safety committee is formed to raise their
voice up to safety management committee and help
them in planning, coordinating and monitoring safety
programs for their welfare.
A report from such committee as sometimes in
favorable situations can be valuable source of
information on the attitude of their fellow workman
towards safety as the workman will usually talk to
their fellows.

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 2.4 Report from safety personal
Union representative
Union leader sometimes can provide valuable
information on the attitude of their members towards
the safety program. When there is good coordination
between union leader and management, the union can
be particularly helpful in bringing in safety
complaints to lights. It also helps in correcting
employees’ wrong attitude.

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 2.4 Report from safety personal
First aid attendance
Under this survey method, a nurse who is friendly
and intelligent can determine without much effort the
reaction of most of those determine without much
effort the reaction of most of those injured workers
who go to first aid. From their reactions, conclusion
can be drawn.

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 2.4 Report from safety personal
Foreman canvass
Foreman is the man to supervise the workmen and
work which is the key work in accident prevention. If
the foreman is kindly safety minded and active
participant in the safety program, his canvass
becomes worthwhile in achieving safe working
environment.
Small notes should be kept as the foreman may need
in order to make report. It is based not to let he
workman know that notes are taken. After the brief
study of his finding in his canvass, it can measure the
current effectiveness of the safety program.
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 2.4 Report from safety personal
Sampling by personnel contact
A safety director of engineer can make a survey by
selecting the personnel in his organization. While
conducting survey, he must keep his power
uninfluenced so that the workers will be able to react
or convey the fact thing. Then this method is very
useful to crosscheck employee attitude.

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 2.4 Report from safety personal
Suggestion box
The suggestions given by the employees can prove
very beneficial for improvement of any organization.
The same concept can be used in case of safety
attainment too.
Suggestion and comments may be invited by
different means such as placing suggestion box and
publishing in safety bulletin.

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 2.4 Report from safety personal
The safety inventory or questionnaire
The inventory is a means of finding facts, defects and
the effectiveness of already launched program or
current working environment.
In safety management, findings from safety inventory
help in planning safety program more effectively for
future.

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 2.5. The interface between safety
problems and concerned parties
Objectives of safety programs:
Gaining and maintaining support for the safety
program at all organizational levels
Motivating, educating and training the participants to
recognize and correct all report and facilities.
Engineering hazard control into the design of
machines, tools, processes and facilities.
Providing a program for inspection of machines,
tools, processes and facilities.
To act in accordance with established safety and
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health standard. 9/19/2018
 2.5. The interface between safety
problems and concerned parties
The effectiveness if such safety programs increases
with the interactions between safety problem and
concerned parties.
The concerned parties include safety engineers,
safety managers, safety legislative and the most
important employees face the real safety problems.
The safety problems are taken off by the employees
and the top level managers come down to workers
level with their planning.

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 2.5. The interface between safety
problems and concerned parties
They can interact an discuss with each others with
their own safety agencies. For such discussions and
interactions, safety management committee can
organize such interaction programs and meetings by
engineers, specialist employees, members of workers
safety committee, members of labor union, foreman
and supervisors.

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