Preventable Injuries Put Focus Back on Workplace Safety

DAC Worldwide - Preventable Injuries Put Focus Back on Workplace Safety

What’s your typical workday like? What’s the biggest worry you have at work on a day-to-day basis? The answers to these questions can vary wildly depending upon what type of job you have and what industry you work in.

If you have a typical office job, your biggest daily concerns are probably related to assignment deadlines and keeping up with the endless stream of emails and phone calls. Threats to your health and safety are likely few and far between.

Sadly, that’s not the case for many people, especially those who work in particularly dangerous industries like agriculture, mining, oil and gas, transportation, warehousing, and construction. For workers in these and similar industries, threats to life and limb are real.

Despite all the progress we’ve made over the past century, workplace accidents, injuries, and even deaths remain an ongoing concern in many industries. Recent statistics reveal that workplace deaths have declined in recent years. However, experts believe workplace injury and fatality rates remain too high, because so many are preventable.

For example, a recent EHS Today article notes that, “[w]hile the overall job fatality rate decreased to 3.3 per 100,000 workers” last year, “[w]orkplace hazards still kill approximately 140,000 workers each year in the United States—including 5,070 from traumatic injuries in 2024 and an estimated 135,000 from occupational diseases each year.”

The AFL-CIO, one of the nation’s largest labor unions, recently “released its annual report on worker injuries, ‘Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect.’” The report sounds the alarm regarding actions of the current Trump administration, concluding that “[n]ational progress over the decades has undoubtedly made workplaces safer and saved lives. But that progress is under attack—now more than ever.”

Here are a few of the most interesting findings outlined in the AFL-CIO report:

  • “The overall job fatality rate decreased to 3.3 per 100,000 workers.”
  • “Employers reported nearly 3.1 million work-related injuries and illnesses, a decrease from the previous year.”
  • “Underreporting of all workplace injuries and illnesses is widespread—the true toll of work-related injuries and illnesses is estimated to be 5.0 million to 7.5 million each year in private industry.”

While “[t]he cost of job injuries and illnesses is enormous, estimated at $177 billion to $354 billion a year,” these figures represent “an undercount of the real impact on society, families and communities.” It’s hard to accurately capture the true cost of workplace injuries and fatalities. It’s even harder to accept those costs, given that so many of them are preventable.

Unfortunately, some of the guardrails intended to curb workplace injuries and fatalities are actively being undermined by the current Trump administration. For example, “[f]ederal OSHA has the lowest number of inspectors in the history of the agency—only enough to now inspect workplaces once every 191 years.”

The EHS Today article points out that “[t]here are 1,651 inspectors (618 federal and 1,033 state) to inspect the 12 million workplaces under the Occupational Safety and Health Act’s jurisdiction, covering 155 million workers—a workforce that keeps growing while OSHA staff numbers do not.”

In addition to undermining OSHA’s ability to inspect workplaces, the AFL-CIO report “notes that the current administration has…[p]roposed twice to eliminate worker safety and health training grants, even though Congress has rejected these cuts so far.”

These attempts to reduce money for effective safety training could seriously undermine workplace safety efforts, since it’s clear that safety training remains one of the most important tools in any employer’s toolbox when it comes to reducing workplace injuries and fatalities.

For employers looking to improve safety training, it can help to partner with established companies to provide industrial-quality training systems that will stand the test of time. For example, DAC Worldwide offers two safety training systems specifically designed to give employees the hands-on experience they need to master lock-out/tag-out skills:

Be sure to check out these training systems and contact a DAC Worldwide representative to learn how you can improve your training today!

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Survey Finds Small Businesses Lack Adequate Safety Training

DAC Worldwide - Small Businesses Must Improve Safety Training

When you think about businesses in the United States, the first companies that might come to mind are likely “big business” giants, like automobile manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, or other behemoths that employ thousands upon thousands of workers.

The reality, however, is that small businesses—those with 500 or fewer employees—far outnumber large businesses. In fact, small businesses in many ways power the U.S. economy and provide the jobs that keep food on the table for millions of Americans.

While small businesses may outnumber big businesses, they rarely compete on a level playing field. In fact, most small business owners would tell you that their resources pale in comparison to their larger counterparts.

Unfortunately, scarce resource allocation may lead some small businesses to avoid investing in necessary areas. A recent survey has revealed that one of those areas in which small businesses may be lacking can have a significant impact: safety training.

According to a recent Safety+Health Magazine article, “[n]early 60% of small-business employees have witnessed a workplace injury in the past year, and almost half of those injuries were considered preventable.” Why so many?

That’s what Pie Insurance, “a commercial insurance provider for small businesses,” wanted to learn when it “commissioned a survey of more than 1,000 full- or part-time workers at businesses with 500 or fewer employees.”

The results of that survey were quite concerning, especially regarding important safety training:

  • “Only 29% of workers said they regularly receive safety training, even though 63% of employers say they provide structured training.”
  • “28% said they’ve never received formal safety training.”

In a press release, Pie Insurance senior vice president of claims Carla Woodard said, “What I find most meaningful about this data is that it shows the gap between what employers think they’re providing and what employees actually experience, and that’s where the real opportunity lies.”

So, what can small businesses do to provide adequate safety training for employees? Fortunately, they don’t need to recreate the wheel. Instead, partnering with established companies to provide industrial-quality training systems that will stand the test of time can help ensure the continued safety of the workforce.

For example, DAC Worldwide offers two safety training systems specifically designed to give employees the hands-on experience they need to master lock-out/tag-out skills:

Be sure to check out these training systems and contact a DAC Worldwide representative to learn how you can improve your training today!

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Recognizing Red Flags: Training Workers to Prioritize Safety

Do you keep an eye out for red flags? If you’re still looking for that someone special, you might see red flags when their online dating profile indicates they’re unemployed and still living in their parents’ basement.

But those aren’t the red flags we’re talking about in this article. Red flags signify danger. They’re warning signs, and today’s workers need to recognize them in the workplace. Why? Their safety and wellbeing depends upon it.

Workplace safety remains a critical component of any industry’s success, yet it too frequently doesn’t get the attention it deserves. New technologies and the latest and greatest advances tend to capture the most attention, but the basics of safety can bring everything to a grinding halt if they’re ignored.

In this article, we’ll take a look at five red flags that workers must learn to recognize in order to make safety a top priority. We’ll also explain the importance of safety training and how the training tools offered by DAC Worldwide can help workers learn the skills that will keep them safe in the modern workplace.

5 Safety Red Flags Employees Must Learn to Recognize

How important is worker safety in your workplace? According to an IndustryWeek article by Matt Thiel and Dan Idzikowski, “nearly all [manufacturers] will say [safety is] a top priority…At the same time, the features and processes intended to keep people safe are rarely put to the test until a crisis occurs. It’s only when safety fails — when there is an injury or a near-miss — that companies question whether they are doing enough to protect workers.”

Modern industrial workplaces feature a wide variety of safety features designed to keep workers safe. Yet, workplace injuries remain a serious problem. For example, “more than 420,000 manufacturing workers were injured on the job in 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, accounting for 15% of all nonfatal injuries in the private sector that year.”

What can be done to improve workplace safety? According to Thiel and Idzikowski, “[s]afety planning starts by imagining the unimaginable…it’s critical to play devil’s advocate and ask what could happen that shouldn’t, and how both the equipment and the operator will respond if it does.”

Once safety risks are identified, workers must be trained to recognize situations in which particular care must be taken to avoid injury. Otherwise, “[w]hen safety is treated as an afterthought, it’s only a matter of time until a preventable accident happens.” Here are five specific red flags Thiel and Idzikowski belive workers must learn to recognize:

  1. Access: Workers must learn to recognize situations in which “[o]perators can access hazardous areas while the hazard is present. Systems that require hands-on operator involvement…have built-in risks…Making these systems safe may mean containing the hazard behind guards or designing the machine so it won’t run until the operator is clear. Whether the danger is readily apparent, like moving parts, or invisible, like electrical current, the best safeguards make it impossible for the operator to even get near.”
  2. Rules: Workers should be on high alert for situations in which “[p]eople are bypassing the rules.Safety depends on people choosing to follow the rules…Even well-trained people can be lulled into a false sense of security and start taking shortcuts to make work faster or easier…If people are looking for ways around a safety system, it’s probably not well aligned with the operation. Rather than disabling the mechanism or retraining the operators, analyze the entire system and find a way to marry safety with the way the process really works.”
  3. Alarms: Workers need to notify management when “[a]larm systems don’t distinguish between emergencies and non-emergencies…if the system treats everything like an emergency, workers will treat nothing like an emergency. Frequent false alarms will lead workers to ignore the warning signs or circumvent them.”
  4. Obsolete: Workers must learn to keep an eye out for “[s]afety features [that] are outdated.A test of older fail-safes may find they no longer work — if they ever did in the first place…Maintaining a safe work environment means ongoing risk assessment. Safety professionals should perform regular audits of the equipment on the shop floor and keep an eye out for advancements that could make it safer.”
  5. Routine: Workers should alert management when they notice that “[s]afety features are not regularly tested and validated…the systems that keep workers safe should be checked on a regular basis.”

If workers can learn to recognize these five red flags, safety will become a higher priority and everyone in the workplace will benefit. As Thiel and Idzikowski acknowledge, “[t]he return on investment in safety is hard to measure. If a company invests millions in safety upgrades and there are no near-misses, was it a waste of money or did the upgrades do their job? A better question is what might realistically happen without safety upgrades.”

Safety Training: Begin with the Basics

Basic safety procedures are essential to keeping employees from becoming injured on the job. While manufacturing jobs can be dangerous, instituting safety procedures and ensuring that employees are properly trained are critical steps that employers must take to minimize the risk of injuries or death.

Not only does proper safety training reduce the number of workplace injuries, but it also adds to a company’s bottom line by improving productivity and reducing downtime caused by employees who can’t work when injured. But where should an employer start? How about at the beginning?

One of the most basic—and important—areas to focus on is the control of hazardous energy, often known by its more popular moniker “lockout/tagout.” According to the United States Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), “[e]nergy sources including electrical, mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, chemical, thermal, or other sources in machines and equipment can be hazardous to workers. During the servicing and maintenance of machines and equipment, the unexpected startup or release of stored energy can result in serious injury or death to workers.”

“Workers servicing or maintaining machines or equipment may be seriously injured or killed if hazardous energy is not properly controlled…Injuries may include electrocution, burns, crushing, cutting, lacerating, amputating, or fracturing body parts… Craft workers, electricians, machine operators, and laborers are among the millions of workers who service equipment routinely and face the greatest risk of injury.”

Fortunately, “[p]roper lockout/tagout (LOTO) practices and procedures safeguard workers from hazardous energy releases.” Teaching workers hands-on LOTO skills will help them to understand how to properly control hazardous energy and maintain a safe work environment.

DAC Worldwide Offers Superior LOTO Training

For companies looking to improve their safety training, a thorough review of current training materials is a great place to start. Do employees have access to hands-on training with actual components they’ll encounter on the job? If not, partnering with established companies to provide industrial-quality training systems that will stand the test of time will help ensure the continued safety of the workforce.

Employers don’t need to recreate the wheel to move toward a skills-based approach to hiring. DAC Worldwide, an industry-leading manufacturer of technical assessment and training tools, offers a variety of solutions to the problems employers face.

For example, DAC Worldwide offers a safety training system specifically designed to give employees the hands-on experience they need to master lockout/tagout skills. DAC Worldwide’s Lock-Out/Tag-Out Training System (811-000) features a realistic, simulated working process environment that facilitates introductory training with hands-on activities related to the process of identifying and locking out sources of dangerous potential energy in an industrial setting.DAC Worldwide - 811-000 - LockoutTagout Trainer Graphic

Since technical training is most effective when learners can gain hands-on practice with industry-standard components they’ll encounter on the job, the Lock-Out/Tag-Out Training System features a wide variety of common, industrial-quality components to provide learners with a realistic training experience that will build skills that translate easily to the workplace.

For example, the Lock-Out/Tag-Out Training System features:

  • two PVC process tanks with removable covers, vents, drains, and process connections;
  • PVC process network with block valves, 3-way valves, figure-8 blinds, and descriptive valve tags;
  • fractional HP magnetic drive centrifugal pump;
  • drain collection and distribution tubing network with valved central collection manifold;
  • electrical controls, with provision for lock-out, including primary service disconnect, motor starter switch, in-line GFI protector, and system plug connection; and
  • a comprehensive lock-out/tag-out tool kit with color-coded locks, tags, multi-lock hasps, specialty electrical locking devices, valve locking devices of multiple designs, and a dedicated toolbox.

The Lock-Out/Tag-Out Training System’s courseware consists of a training manual and hands-on exercises. These can be used as part of either an instructor-led course or self-directed study. A final performance assessment exercise is also provided, allowing the system to be used in an alternate configuration for testing purposes.

Contact a consultant with DAC Worldwide today to learn more about how their technical training tools can help you build the assessment and training program your company needs. Using DAC Worldwide training and assessment tools, you can transition to a skills-based hiring approach and fill the skills gaps in your organization!

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