Sometimes, it takes a bit of convincing to realize that your worksite safety isn’t as great as you believe it is. A lot goes on when managers and health and safety officers are absent, and it’s the responsibility of the employer to ensure that employees practice proper procedures to avoid injuries, hefty fines and other subsequent consequences.
To prove what goes on behind the scenes, we decided to run a health and safety monitoring blitz over a 5 week period. We asked 6 clients – who we currently monitor for security purposes, to participate in the experiment. We chose one random day each week to monitor their sites during the daytime for health and safety infractions. The catch was that the clients and their workers were not aware of the day which we’d be monitoring. When our live monitoring operators detected an infraction, a time stamped snapshot was sent to management, along with a small writeup detailing the observance.
It was a tiny test, but the results were BIG.
The outcome of the experiment surprised us. Although the monitoring was only over the course of 5 days and 6 sites, our live monitoring operators detected a total of 195 infractions. That’s an average of 39 infractions per site over the course of 5 days!
To no surprise, 167 of the 195 infractions were PPE related (failure to wear hard hats, harnesses, eye protection, etc). Personal protective equipment is crucial as it’s meant to minimize exposure to harmful dangers in the workplace and provide adequate protection from falling debris, hazardous chemicals, toxic fumes, extreme temperatures, and much more.
