Safety On – And Off – The Job

Question: Can you turn safety on and off, just like a light switch?

 
 In a year’s time, more than 19 million people in the US needed medical treatment for off the job injuries. That’s one out of every 16 people.
 
Converted into the familiar workplace injury metric used the world over, that’s an injury rate of about 6. That is double the US industrial average, and more than ten times the rate of the top echelon of safest industrial sites.
 
None of which should come as any big news: most people know they’re safer at work than they are at home.
 
Those statistics suggest that people can – and do – turn safety on when they show up for work, and turn it off when they head home. If they didn’t, there wouldn’t be all that much of a difference. With fewer hazards at home, you might even think that people would be safer off the job.
 
But the numbers make a powerful case: they are not.
 
Why do you think that is?

Paul Balmert
June 2017