It's a lot like life itself: If we judge experiences and events - and even people - from only one perspective, chances are good the truth will be compromised.
This reality becomes gravely important when applied to the concept of workplace safety.
"In order for us to help each other, we must start to look at safety from all angles," said Dana Hawkins, chemical manufacturing division safety coach for Eastman Chemical Co. "If we work together to identify hazards beforehand, we will be able to prevent a lot of accidents from happening."
According to Hawkins, watching out for each other is vital to preventing accidents from happening.
"Seeing safety through the lens of your co-workers can also help you better understand the perspective of safety from a different point of view," he said during Environmental, Health and Safety Seminar and Industry Trade Show in Galveston, Texas.
While dangerous occurrences like falling objects, hazards on floors and similar challenges can certainly threaten workplace safety, Hawkins pointed to another kind of threat that is often less obvious.
"We've heard a lot about mental stress lately," Hawkins said. "How many of us feel like we're not mentally stressed? If you're not feeling mentally stressed, you're not human."
Hawkins described the value of reaching out to co-workers on a personal level.
"Sometimes we just need somebody to say, 'Hey, I care about you.' We try to show it, but caring is about so much more than just showing it," he said. "Caring is saying, 'Hey, you need safety glasses. Let's go get you a pair.' This is a caring act because you want your co-workers to go home safely just like you want to go home safely."
Hawkins noted "there might be something more going on" with co-workers that isn't known to others which may impact their own safety and the safety of those around them.
"People go through emotional things every single day, and some people don't even know it," he said. "Whatever the reality is, you're worried about it, and sometimes you take that to work and people don't even recognize it."
According to Hawkins, it's important to remember that anyone can experience work-related mental stress.
"Work-related stress and mental health problems often go together and can be very similar," he said.
"Work-related stress can aggravate an existing mental health problem, making it more difficult to control," Hawkins explained. "If work-related stress reaches a point where it has triggered an existing mental health problem, it becomes hard to separate one from the other."
Common mental health problems and stress can exist co-dependently, Hawkins said, as people can experience work-related stress and physical changes like high blood pressure without having anxiety, depression or other mental health problems.
"They can also have anxiety and/or depression without experiencing stress," he said. "The key differences between them are their causes and the ways they are treated."
Hawkins further explained that stress is a reaction to an event or an experience in someone's home life, work life or a combination of both. Common mental health problems can have a single cause outside work, like bereavement or a medical condition.
"People are going through divorces or postpartum depression," he said. "Somebody at work experiences one or two of these things every single day, and people can have these sorts of problems with no obvious cause."
"What can you do to help them?" Hawkins continued. "As an employer, you can help manage and prevent stress by improving conditions at work, but you also have a role in making adjustments and helping someone manage a mental health problem at work. When you see something that looks different, you know that they're going through something."
Hawkins shared a story about a co-worker who told him that his wife was fighting cancer.
"He said, 'Can you pray for her?" I said, 'Yes, we can, but what are you doing right now?'"
The co-worker replied that he was working on a shutdown.
"I told him, 'You need to talk to your supervisor, right now. We need to put someone else in your place. Then, you need to go talk to a counselor we have here at work. She can help you because I know your mind is not where it needs to be,'" Hawkins said. "These are things we need to look at when we're talking about safety."
