Document LoeMewJ8wrEz7az9y79L224yw

SAFETY ORGANIZATION AND SAFETY INSPECTION Fig. 2-3. Among o now employee's firsI and most important contacts ore those made with fellow workers It is impor tant that they reflect well on company pol icies and practices Sometimes the safety man is given au thority usually limited to line officials On fast-moving and rapidly changing opera tions or those on which delayed action would endanger the hves of workers or others, it is not uncommon to find that the safety director has authority to order im mediate changes, as in construction and demolition work, fumigation, some phases of manufacture of explosives, chemicals, or other dangerous substances, or emergency work This authority, where granted, must be used with discretion, since the safety man will be accountable to management for errors in judgment Award winning programs Among industrial organizations which are highly successful in the reduction of health and injury hazards, there are variations in safety organization and practice These or ganizations, all of them winners of Nation al Safety Council awards granted to con cerns with outstanding safety records, were asked to describe the operation of their ac cident prevenbon work Their rephes are summarized in Table 2-A Since 45 of the 54 concerns reporting are multi-plant organizations, the replies re flect the experience of many times that number of mdividual plants That the safety plans used by these plants produce results is shown by the fact that these safety award winners operated at ac cident frequencies of only one-fourth the average frequency rate in their respective industry group In other words, then re sults are about four tunes as good as those of comparable plants in the same industries Training employees No matter how well safety is engineered into a plant or a job, much of the safety of employees depends upon their own conduct Some people work safely in dangerous sur roundings whereas others have accidents on jobs that seem quite safe Controlling peo ple is, therefore, a necessary part of an ac cident prevenbon program The ordering of everything jpeople do is neither jaossible nor desirable Id addibon to providing direct supervision, it is neces sary to influence the voluntary acts of work ers by educabon and motivabon Much of the effort put into an industrial safety program is, therefore, directed toward educat ing and influencing people The braining of the employee begins the day he goes to work (Fig 2-3) Whether or not the firm has a formal mduebon pro gram, the employee starts to learn about his job and to form attitudes about many things--including safety--the first day The all-important problem of training employees is covered in Chapter 6 of this * 2-9