While you read this paper, I want you to try something. Read it without an attitude. What I am asking you to do is read this paper with no preconceived ideas and form no opinions. I want you to shut down all of your emotions and be completely neutral. When you are finished reading it, I want you to discuss what you have read with someone else without your attitude influencing what you say.
What I have asked you to do is virtually impossible. No one moves through life in a "neutral" state. Our environment continuously influences our attitudes and as a result our attitudes are in a constant state of flux. These changes guide our choices and behaviors. Despite the dramatic role attitudes play in our daily life, they are often neglected in the development and implementation of injury prevention and injury prevention processes.
I will often begin a management discussion about attitude with the following 3 questions:
If two of your employees get hurt, and one of the injured employee loves his job and the other hates it, who do you think is going to recover faster, come back to work quicker and cost the company less money?
You have the choice of hiring one of two work groups. One is a group of unmotivated, disgruntled and depressed employees and the other is a group of motivated, satisfied and happy employees. Which of these groups do you want to have working in your facility and which is going to do better quality work, be more productive and experience fewer injuries?
Why did you answer these two questions the way that you did?
All too often people believe that attitude is unrelated to safety. This couldn't be farther from the truth. Why is it that a workers' compensation back injury takes significantly longer to recover and costs significantly more money to resolve than a non-workers' compensation back injury? Is it because the medical community knows more about treating non-work related injuries? Is it because non-work related injury patients go to less expensive clinics? The reality is that the workers' compensation system has an undeniable impact on the attitudes of business owners, injured workers and the legal and medical communities. In short, the workers' compensation system has an attitude, and this attitude is costly!
We have enough information available today to make every workplace safe. We know enough about body mechanics to teach everyone a better way to perform material handling. We know enough about human physiology to give everyone appropriate stretches to perform throughout the workday. We also know enough to identify the most appropriate equipment for a job. So if we know all these things, what is the problem? The problem is the attitudes. Most companies are well versed in the "what to do" and pay less attention to the "how to do it".
