Sadly, thousands of employees are injured or become ill due to accidental exposure to harmful substances or conditions, despite workplace training and preventive measures.
In many cases, the signs and warnings designed to protect against these exposures to incidents go unnoticed. Several factors may be to blame, and a lack of training is not always the culprit. Employees often become desensitized to the environment they repeatedly encounter day after day.
Placing a significant emphasis on the visual recognition of hazards in the workplace can prevent harmful exposure, even more so than traditional types of workplace training. How many times, for example, have you walked by a hazard without noticing it? The ability to visually recognize hazards is a discipline that toolbox talks, online training modules, scheduled safety meetings and documented procedures can't instill. This skill only comes from the continual practice of concentrating your visual focus on an investigative pursuit, also known as "visual literacy."
Promote visual literacy
Visual literacy, or the art of "learning to see," is an essential preventive tool that can decrease the number of incidents in your workplace. This concept involves methodically searching and scanning the area, discovering the meaning behind what you see, and deciding what action to take based on that information. It is not a passive glance or even a routine check; it's a structured visual analysis in which you learn to interpret everything you see to gain an understanding of the whole picture. Visual literacy teaches us to strive for results beyond hazard recognition - results that focus on preventive action.
Enhance visual aids
To boost visual literacy, supervisors should take measures to ensure that safety information and warnings are highly visible. As you walk through the work area, ask yourself, "Are there any potential hazards my employees might not recognize?" Then, make sure warnings or notifications are posted in highly visible areas. Here are some examples of hazards that are often overlooked and frequently cause incidents:
- Missing or obscure safety signs
- Broken or hidden indicator gauges
- Confusing container labels
- Unmarked pathways
- Containers that appear secure but are stacked or secured incorrectly
Whatever your worksite situation, find ways to enhance how hazardous situations and materials are identified visually.
Decipher visual clues
Supervisors must train employees to decipher visual clues that point to hazards. Employees should be able to anticipate hazards that could potentially occur, not just look for existing hazardous conditions. Deciphering visual clues begins with methodically searching and then using the power of deduction to determine "what could go wrong here" and how you could fix it. It also involves paying acute attention to warning signs, labels, placards, pictograms, color-coding and other types of visual references that may be overlooked in the monotony of daily operations. Employees must put into practice reading and rereading instructions, posters, checklists, logs and safety cards. Finally, visual scanning involves not merely relying on gauges and instruments to sound alarms, but actively studying the dials, digital indicators and graphs to comprehend what the numbers mean regarding site safety.
Additional ways to eliminate incidents in your workplace are to:
- Invite an expert from outside your area to point out hidden hazards.
- Give constructive feedback after safety inspections.
- Conduct periodic "hazard hunts" at the worksite.
- Routinely perform methodic inspections of each piece of equipment and each area of the worksite.
By encouraging your employees to make visual literacy part of their everyday work processes, you can ensure everyone learns not just to look but to identify hazards before they cause incidents.
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