Women in Construction and the Problem of PPE

A graphic of a woman working at a construction site.

Women in construction have a difficult relationship with personal protective equipment (PPE). On the one hand, PPE is critical for protecting them against chemical, physical, mechanical and other workplace hazards. On the other hand, PPE that doesn’t properly fit women’s bodies can be so uncomfortable or ineffective as to increase the risk of injury or death.

This article will examine the difficulties women have with PPE in construction, as well as ways in which to make positive changes for women in the industry.

PPE and the Hierarchy of Controls

In the hierarchy of controls for eliminating or reducing workplace hazards, PPE is the least effective control. It is the last line of defense in environments in which elimination or other controls aren’t feasible or don’t provide sufficient protection. Table 1 shows the standard hierarchy of controls.

A table of the hierarchy of controls

PPE is a critical component of construction safety. Construction sites are dynamic environments with … Read more...

Intelex EMEA User Conference – Closing Day Summary

Day 2 of the Intelex EMEA User Conference in London ended with more great discussions and insights from our customers, partners and Intelex experts. To catch up on the Day 1 proceedings, be sure to read our summary blog here.

For those of you who didn’t make it to London to catch up with us, here are a few items we explored on the final day of the conference.

AI and the Future of Safety

AI is dramatically changing the way we work. With more data from frontline safety inspections and observations pouring into our management systems, AI is going to play a critical role in analyzing it to identify leading indicators and prevent incidents before they happen.

Scott Gaddis presents how technology can help create a great safety culture. 

One of the most significant contributions AI can make is eliminating the variables in observations and incident data. While … Read more...

Look for the “Believers” to Evangelize Your Safety Culture

Occupational health and safety, like anything, needs to be imbedded into culture and culture is created by the employees.

Safety cultures should be created by employees for each other – empowered, invested and supported by the company – as opposed to forced down and then begrudgingly adopted or ignored.

That’s the view of Neil Bedwell, a council member of Forbes magazine who heads up a consultancy that focuses on culture called Local Industries, based in Atlanta. Employees represent the most important stakeholders in any workplace initiative, he says. In the context of health and safety, guidelines may be created by a small group of senior people, but it is the employees on the floor who bring these principles to life day-by-day and minute-by-minute.

“Occupational health and safety, like anything, needs to be imbedded into culture and culture is created by the employees,” Bedwell says. “Health and safety … Read more...

Lucky #7: Tips to Develop a Laser-Focused Safety Vision for 2022

A great safety process begins with a great safety vision.

When an organization believes in a vision, or in this case – a safety vision – it will elevate individual values to that of the shared vision. What it means to me as a safety professional is that I have a chance to capture an employee all day/every day, at work and at home. It fosters a partnership that extends past the employee-manager relationship and opens the door to new ideas and increases engagement while adding shareholder value.

It also allows me to challenge the organization when decisions are contemplated that threaten the success of the endorsed safety vision. Simply put, a great safety process begins with a great safety vision that is so real you can latch on to it and leverage it for success. It creates energy and a passion for making change happen. It inspires individuals and … Read more...

The 10 Signs of Worker Fatigue

A frontline worker is tired at an industrial manufacturing facility.

Worker fatigue increases the risk for injury and deteriorating health (infections, illnesses and mental health disorders).

Long work hours and irregular work shifts are common in our society. Many workers around the world spend over 40 hours a week at work, and hundreds of millions of people work full time on evening, night, rotating or other irregular shifts. Work schedules like these may cause workplace fatigue.

Shift workers may have to work days, evenings, nights and/or on a rotating or on-call basis. They may work extended shifts (more than 8 hours long), rotating or irregular shifts or consecutive shifts resulting in far more hours than the typical 40-hour work week. Long work hours and the associated fatigue can increase the risk of injuries and accidents and can contribute to poor overall health. Studies show that long work hours can result in increased levels of stress, poor eating habits, lack of … Read more...

Safety First: Boosting Your Organization’s Culture of Safety by Steering Clear of Seven Dangerous Mistakes

Safety Management Program

As they say, “invest in tomorrow by practicing safety today.” While that may seem to be a very commonsensical statement, common sense is not always common.

With safety being a key component to most post-pandemic business continuity plans, there has been a re-focus on the culture of safety. Most organizations that have a safety-first mantra have put a strong focus on creating effective safety observation programs. According to Chuck Pettinger, Process Change Leader for Predictive Solutions Corp, these programs “bolster employee engagement and provide a great repository for leading indicator analysis.”

While the focus of any safety program is to incorporate best practices and learnings to ensure that your program is founded on foolproof methods, there is also a lot we can learn from their failures. Put another way, we can identify additional opportunities to further test and optimize.


How Multi-Faceted Safety Programs Can Effectively Drive a Strong Safety Culture
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Directly from the Source: How to Best Transform EHS Today’s Return to Work Survey Results into Action Plans

There’s something to be said about hearing something directly from the source. No presumptions, no exaggeration—just pure, unadulterated facts. It’s for that very reason that surveys and focus groups play such a critical role in business in general and in EHS in particular. While this applies to most initiatives, this is especially true for return to work (RTW) programs, as they were developed quickly in response to the sudden outbreak of COVID-19.

For these programs, capturing employee feedback, particularly in the early stages post implementation, is critical. This is not only to improve processes where areas of improvement have been identified but also to course-correct where action plans are not working. Essentially, creating closed-loop processes will differentiate evolving RTW ones from their static counterparts.

To explore this further, we will look at the latest survey-focused report published by EHS today, Safety Professionals Prepare for the Post-Pandemic Workplace.


EHS Today’s Safety
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Good Systems Are Essential to Great Safety Cultures

There’s no easy and quick fix when it comes to building a safety culture.

Every organization is unique and dynamic in nature, and each has its own personality. Added to this is the reality that success in Safety is, for the most part, determined by the Safety professional’s customer – the organization’s workers themselves – and for most of us as Safety pros, our list of customers is long and varied. And each has a different definition of success.

Graphic of manufacturing company using mobile inspection tools to create a good safety system

Parallel to this thought is that there is no “one right way” to build a safer culture. Rather, it is a number of elements that must be employed to build robustness within the safety process. Simply put, organizations that demonstrate world-class performance employ a strategy with elements that control loss-producing variation throughout the work system.

Controlling process variation is not a new concept. Many successful operational effectiveness programs have been … Read more...