By Lee Wendel, CSP, CSPHA, SFM Loss Prevention Technical Leader

We know you’re busy managing your teams and operations every day. This might include keeping workers safe from exposure to dangerous materials. One area that we know can present consistent challenges is the rigorous compliance standards for proper management of hazardous chemicals in the workplace.

OSHA reports that over 43 million American workers are exposed to hazardous chemicals on the job every year. From a regulatory compliance standpoint, the OSHA Hazard Communication Standard (HazCom) can be difficult to manage without some help. We know that the effort is worth it because some of the injuries that we see from chemical exposure can be life-changing.

One recent example of such an incident came from a school district insured by SFM.

During the summer, an employee was cleaning lockers using a solvent designed to remove graffiti and other marks. The product’s label contained warnings about health hazards, but the employee did not adhere to them. The worker was wearing gloves but did not use the recommended ventilation or respiratory equipment. As a result of the exposure, this individual experienced dizziness, breathing difficulty and a body-wide tingling sensation — ultimately requiring hospitalization via ambulance.

To make such risks more manageable, SFM has identified a vendor that offers valuable tools that facilitate compliance with industrial hygiene standards. Through a partnership with SFM, Velocity EHS has made its MSDSonline product available to our policyholders at a discount.

Their solution includes:

• Safety Data Sheet compliance
  The solution has an SDS database that is constantly updated, giving you confidence that you always have the most up-to-date information about the chemicals your teams use.
• Right To Know compliance
  A solution is available that works across multiple platforms, including mobile devices, and provides 24/7 access to critical information.
• Secondary container labels
  Simplifies the labeling process for each hazardous chemical that is dispensed into smaller containers. Labeling includes all required elements and pictograms including the PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) that must be worn while using the chemical.

If you are interested in learning more about MSDSonline, review the industrial hygiene listings on the safety products and vendors page.

It’s more dangerous to work in a hospital than to construct one.

That’s according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data on non-fatal injuries by occupation.

Although construction has a reputation as a high-risk industry, workers in hospitals and nursing homes have higher injury rates than workers in manufacturing, construction or logging.

See the chart below for the comparison of injury rates by occupation.

Who is being injured?

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics 2017 incident rates for non-fatal injuries per 10,000 full-time workers.

How are health care workers being injured?

In its February 2018 Work Comp newsletter , the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry reported on the sources of injuries in Minnesota hospitals in 2016:

• Nearly 60 percent due to overexertion
• Nearly 20 percent due to slips, trips and falls
• Nearly 10 percent due to violence

Thirty percent of the injuries directly involved a hospital patient. Of those injuries involving a patient, the majority were due to overexertion while lifting or moving a patient.

The second most common cause was intentional or unintentional violence by the patient. Health care workers face some of the greatest risk for workplace violence. See our De-escalation Team Training – health care resource for information on de-escalation tactics in health care settings.

Strains and sprains account for more than half of all health care injuries reported to SFM. Many strain and sprain injuries occur while manually lifting and transferring patients. Fractures and contusions made up 19 percent of injuries, and punctures and lacerations were another 17 percent.

See the chart for the types of injuries sustained by health care workers.

Source: SFM 2007-2016 health care policyholders claim data.

Some groups at more risk

Nursing home workers and other types of health care professionals have higher injury rates. Home health care workers face additional challenges due to their unique working environment.

Safety in health care faces another challenge due to an aging workforce. The U.S. Department of Labor reports that the average nurse is now older than 50 years old.

When health care workers over the age of 40 are injured, their claim is 76 percent more likely to be an expensive lost-time claim, where they are unable to return to work quickly. Older workers are at high risk for serious injuries due to lost muscle strength and other factors. Their more severe injuries and slower recovery times result in claim costs 2.4 times higher than for younger workers.

For more data and tips on how to reduce lifting injuries, download our occupational injuries in health care fact sheet .

We asked SFM’s loss prevention representatives what we’d find in the winter emergency kits they keep in their cars in case of roadside emergencies.

Their safety kits include:

• Magnetized emergency flashers you can stick on the car
• Fleece hats, scarves and mittens
• Tow ropes
• A blanket, such as a Mylar emergency blanket
• First aid supplies
• Hand and foot warmers
• Matches and candles
• A whistle
• A flashlight and spare batteries
• Warm boots
• High visibility vest
• Shovel
• A lithium battery jump starter, which can also charge cell phones and provide light
• Packaged snacks such as nuts and granola bars
• A snow suit
• Road flares and warning triangles
• Chemical light sticks
• Traction footwear

Follow these other winter driving safety tips for more advice.

Looking for an easy, inexpensive way to prevent injuries in your workplace? Consider replacing old manually retractable and fixed-blade utility knives with a concealed blade version.

They typically cost less than $3 a piece, and can prevent serious lacerations. As a side benefit, they also help prevent damage to the contents of boxes.

You can purchase these types of knives through Martor , Uline and many other retailers.

When it’s snowy and icy outside, it takes the right moves to avoid a winter slip-and-fall injury in a parking lot. Show your employees this lighthearted video to remind them how to walk safely in slippery conditions.

Avoid winter slips and falls: Icy parking lot safety

For more winter prevention resources and information, visit SFM’s winter slip and fall prevention page.

What do Midwesterners dread most about nasty winter weather? Driving in it.

Getting across town during a snow or ice storm can be stressful, time-consuming and dangerous.

What can you as an employer do to keep your employees safe and your organization functioning when dangerously bad weather hits?

There’s not always an easy answer, but the first step is to have a plan.

Why you need a severe winter weather policy

A severe weather policy is a critical component of your business’s overall emergency preparedness and disaster recovery plan.

It’s not uncommon for state departments of transportation to advise against travel due to severe weather. Whether it’s poor visibility or ice, unsafe road conditions could keep your employees from the office.

Schools have decades of experience in communicating closures to keep staff and students out of treacherous weather conditions. They’ve established clear plans on who makes the decision to close, by what time, and how to notify people.

But calling a snow day isn’t just for schools.

It’s essential for employers of all types to be prepared for a disruption to normal business operations because of severe weather. Of course, not everyone can shut down during inclement weather. Hospitals, for example, need to be staffed 24/7. You may have critical operations to keep running.

How can you get prepared? With a snow day policy.

Before the snow flies: Develop a snow day policy

The time to plan for bad weather is before a storm hits. Employees will have many questions that should be addressed in an inclement weather policy, like in this example policy .

“The inclement weather policy must set expectations, present a balanced approach to compensation, mitigate risks for both employers and employees, and present a fair solution for emergency situations,” writes Susan Heathfield .

Eight items to consider covering in your snow policy

Following are items you should think about covering in your inclement weather policy:

• How you will communicate a closure to employees — phone call, text, email, broadcasting system, etc.
• Your expectation that employees use caution while entering and leaving work in poor weather conditions
• Your intention to monitor the weather forecast, as well as any specific conditions that will trigger a closure (snowfall amount, temperature, electrical outage, loss of heat, declaration of weather emergency, etc.)
• Instructions that traveling employees are not to drive in unsafe conditions, as well as a reminder of your prohibition of cell phone use while driving
• Expectations about what happens in the event of closure, such as whether employees should work from home
• Compensation in the event of a severe weather scenario, keeping in mind local, state and federal laws
• How you will notify customers, clients or vendors of a closure — notice on your website, voicemail message, email, etc.
• The expectation in the event of a mid-day closure that employees are expected to leave immediately

Let’s look at a few of these items in more detail.

How to define a weather emergency

When developing your plan, consider setting specific criteria about the amount of snowfall, road conditions and temperatures that may trigger a closure. This will keep your employees from wondering about a snow day each time the snowplows come out.

Blizzards aren’t the only weather situation that may require closing. Below-freezing temperatures and wind chills as low as -60 degrees prompted the governor of Minnesota to close schools statewide in January of 2014.

Rely on an expert like the National Weather Service for weather conditions and to your state’s department of transportation for road conditions. You may look to your local school district as a guide. Know the terminology for different winter weather alerts, advisories and warnings.

Expectations for employees

If you’ve set up the ability for workers to telecommute or work remotely, do you still expect employees to work if your office is closed due to weather? What if the company does not close, but an employee would prefer to avoid traveling? Remote work options could allow them to avoid taking a personal day.

As with other parts of your snow day plan, communicate clear expectations with your employees if you expect them to work remotely if they cannot make it into the office. Prepare your IT infrastructure for a spike in activity if many more employees than normal try to access the remote work system.

Your weather emergency plan also needs to factor in maintaining any business-critical operations. If a vital employee cannot make it to work, do you have a backup plan?

Compensation

Keep in mind the business implications of voluntarily closing because of the weather. Even if your employees aren’t working, they may still be due a paycheck. Check your state and federal regulations for rules around paying exempt and non-exempt employees in various bad weather scenarios .

By developing a snow day policy ahead of time, you’ll be prepared to make a thoughtful decision before a storm hits, and you’ll help your employees stay safe.

Key: Be proactive and build a strong safety culture

An inclement weather policy can formalize your stance on employee safety during winter weather conditions, but ultimately, employees must also make decisions about their own safety and use their best judgment about whether they should be driving.

That’s why it’s important to foster a workplace culture where employees know you care about their health and safety and wouldn’t punish them for prioritizing their safety over work.

In the same vein, you can be proactive by starting to plan as soon as you hear a big storm is coming. You can encourage employees to rearrange their schedules in advance to avoid driving during the worst of it. This might mean leaving a day early to get to an out-of-town meeting, doing a delivery early or simply rescheduling an offsite meeting.

Strategies like this can keep your organization functioning while also keeping your employees safe.

This is not intended to serve as legal advice for individual fact-specific legal cases or as a legal basis for your employment practices.

This post was originally published on January 18, 2017 and updated on November 7, 2018.

Have you ever been driving home late at night and had to fight to keep your eyes open?

Or maybe you’ve felt your attention drift while driving to work in the morning?

It might seem commonplace, but driving in these situations can be dangerous. Even if you’re not falling asleep at the wheel, drowsy driving poses a risk to your life and others.

Driving while drowsy can cause drivers to pay less attention to the road, slows their reaction time and affects the ability to make good decisions. It also impairs information processing and short-term memory and decreases performance, vigilance and motivation.

Accidents caused by drowsy driving are most common late at night and early in the morning, with early afternoon also being a peak time for drowsiness. Most crashes result from failure to brake or avoid an accident. It’s also common for drivers to veer off the road.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, drowsy driving causes 100,000 crashes, 71,000 non-fatal injuries and 1,500 deaths per year. However, these are low estimates as drowsy driving can be difficult to track. It’s thought that up to 6,000 fatal crashes each year may be caused by drowsy drivers.

Underlying causes

Drowsy driving occurs when a driver is sleepy or fatigued. Excessive drowsiness is usually caused by sleep loss from restriction or too little sleep. This can result from interrupted or fragmented sleep or chronic sleep debt. Other factors include undiagnosed or untreated sleep disorders, the use of sedating medication and consumption of alcohol when already tired. These factors can compound on one another, and any combination of them increases the chances of causing a motor vehicle accident.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, people who sleep six hours a night are twice as likely to be involved in a drowsy driving crash than those sleeping eight hours or more, and people sleeping less than five hours increase the risk to four or five times.

Commercial drivers who operate vehicles such as tow trucks, tractor-trailers and buses have increased risk of drowsiness. Workers with long, rotating or night shifts, such as doctors, nurses, pilots and police officers, have a higher risk of drowsy driving, especially when driving home.

Warning signs

Warning signs include:

• Yawning
• Frequent blinking or rubbing your eyes
• Blurry vision
• Heavy eyelids or inability to keep eyes open
• Nodding off or trouble keeping your head up
• Difficulty remembering the past few miles or missing your exit
• Drifting from your lane or hitting a rumble strip on the side of the road
• Ending up too close to nearby cars or tailgating
• Daydreaming, difficulty focusing or wondering and disconnected thoughts

If you experience these signs, pull over to rest or change drivers. It’s not enough to just roll down the windows or turn up the radio.

Prevention

There are many ways to prevent drowsy driving:

• Get enough sleep

At least seven hours is the recommended amount of sleep for the average adult.

• Develop good sleeping habits

Go to bed and get up at the same time every day and make sure your bedroom is dark, quiet, relaxing and at a comfortable temperature. Remove electronic devices from your room, avoid large meals, caffeine and alcohol before bed and get some exercise.

• Talk to your physician about treatment options if you have a sleep disorder

Pay attention to potential symptoms, such as snoring or regularly feeling sleepy during the day. Many people with obstructive sleep apnea and narcolepsy go untreated.

• Avoid drinking alcohol or taking medications that make you sleepy

Check the label on medications or talk to your pharmacist. Common sedating medications include antidepressants, cold tablets and antihistamines.

• Avoid driving late at night or alone

Share driving with other passengers on long trips, pull over at rest stops and take a short nap or arrange for someone to give you a ride home after working a late shift. On long trips, schedule breaks or switch drivers every 100 miles or 2 hours.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) released its preliminary top 10 violations for 2018 in late October at the 2018 National Safety Council Congress & Expo .

These standards were the most frequently cited during OSHA’s fiscal year that ended September 30. According to OSHA, the list serves to “increase awareness of these standards so employers can take steps to find and fix the hazards to prevent injury or illness.”

The top 10 most frequently cited OSHA violations for 2018

Fall protection has topped the list of most-cited OSHA violations for eight years in a row, and many of the other standards continue to be in the top 10 year after year. The only new item in 2018 is eye and face protection at number 10.

Here’s the full list:

1. Fall protection – general requirements
2. Hazard communication
3. Scaffolding
4. Respiratory protection
5. Lockout/tagout
6. Ladders
7. Powered industrial trucks
8. Fall protection – training requirements
9. Machine guarding
10. Eye and face protection

Safety resources from SFM and OSHA

SFM and OSHA both offer safety resources to educate employers and workers on common sources of violations and injuries.  See below for a sampling of resources for each of the top 10 violations.

Fall protection

• Fall protection 5-Minute Solution
• Fall protection standards blog post

Hazard communication

• Hazard communication blog post
• OSHA hazard communication guide

Scaffolding

• Scaffolding 5-Minute Solution
• OSHA scaffolding eTool

Respiratory protection

• Respirators 5-Minute Solution
• OSHA respiratory protection eTool

Lockout/tagout

• Lockout/tagout 5-Minute Solution
• OSHA Lockout/tagout interactive training program

Ladders

• Ladder safety 5-Minute Solution
• Ladder safety resources blog post

Powered industrial trucks

• Forklift inspection 5-Minute Solution
• Forklift safety 5-Minute Solution
• Forklift safety for pedestrians 5-Minute Solution
• OSHA powered industrial truck eTool

Machine guarding

• Machine guarding 5-Minute Solution
• OSHA machine guarding eTool

Eye and face protection

• Eye protection 5-Minute Solution
• Personal protective equipment CompTalk
• Personal protective equipment checklist poster

This post was originally published on December 6, 2017, and updated on October 31, 2018.

Skip isn’t the only superhero who cares about safety. School bus drivers play the role of safety hero every day as they go about their jobs.

This year’s theme for National School Bus Safety Week, “My Driver – My Safety Hero,” reminds us of bus drivers’ important roles in getting people where they’re going safely.

National School Bus Safety Week , from October 22-26, brings awareness to the dangers for drivers, students and pedestrians. It’s everyone’s responsibility to stay safe around school buses.

School bus driver safety tips and resources

Bus drivers have additional duties beyond transportation. Drivers must be aware of their own risk of injury, while driving safely and keeping an eye on their surroundings.

School Bus Safety Week offers a chance to provide drivers with a few safety basics, including:

• Remember that drivers and pedestrians around you may be distracted
• Use safe practices when performing checks or maintenance
• Maintain three points of contact when entering or leaving the bus
• Make sure everyone is seated before starting to move the bus

SFM’s safety resources help keep bus drivers injury-free, from pre-trip inspection to exiting the vehicle using 3 points of contact. Download SFM’s Supervisor Initiated Training talks tailored to transportation workers to make it easy for your leaders to have a discussion with their teams about school bus safety.

National School Bus Safety Week is sponsored by the National Association for Pupil Transportation , National School Transportation Association and National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services .

By Lee Wendel, CSP, CPSHA, SFM Loss Prevention Technical Leader

For most of us, the most dangerous thing we do every day is drive a vehicle.

In the U.S., more than 34,000 people die in road crashes each year and the number is increasing by about 2,000 per year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Over the last 10 years, technology has advanced leaps and bounds in many helpful ways — allowing us to more easily communicate and share our lives with others. But these advances have also introduced unexpected hazards.

As individuals are becoming more dependent on their phones for information, it’s gotten increasingly difficult for some to resist looking at them, even while behind the wheel. This creates a significant safety hazard. A recent Los Angeles Times article went so far as to compare the impact of texting while driving to that of drunk driving.

The increasing prevalence of distracted driving is putting everyone on the roads at a heightened risk for preventable collisions. Drivers who focus on their phones instead of the road greatly reduce their ability to react to changing conditions and hazards. For this reason, SFM recommends against any cellphone use while driving.

Technology reducing crash risks

While technology introduces risk, it can also be helpful in eliminating it. One example is the collision-avoidance technology many manufacturers are integrating into their vehicles. These systems can detect a potential collision and warn the driver or in some cases actually apply the vehicle brakes. This can reduce the severity of an incident, or even prevent it completely.

While vehicles have never been safer, we still have a problem with increasing numbers of crashes and deaths on the road. Even as the promise of fully autonomous cars looms on the horizon, the driver continues to be a critical component in preventing vehicle accidents.

In-vehicle monitoring service for policyholders

To help our policyholders harness the right technology, SFM partners with a leader in the vehicle monitoring field, StriveSafe by Geoforce. The StriveSafe system gives employers access to an in-vehicle monitoring system that can help them improve their workers’ driving behaviors through positive recognition.

Safe driving telematics benefits

• Encourages safe driving behavior
• Real-time vehicle monitoring
• Top driver recognition
• Easy vehicle installation
• Discounted subscription cost
• Enhanced package options

The system is designed to give consistent feedback to the drivers without introducing distractions. Each driver is notified through a weekly scorecard that shows opportunities to improve his or her “score.” To enable monitoring, each vehicle needs only to be fitted with a low-cost device that’s easy to install in vehicles built in the last 20 years.

Thanks to our partnership, this program is available at a significantly reduced cost to SFM policyholders. Employers interested in fleet management will find that the devices can provide those functions as an added benefit.