Page 23 - OHS, October 2021

We know that drivers have limited reaction times, and the faster people drive, the longer it will take them to stop.
skills to complete tasks rapidly. For them, working at a quick pace is a choice. But often because of that, workers of all skill levels are made to work faster than their ability will safely allow. When this happens, it is usually because their employer has asked them to.
On the autobahn, no one is forced to drive faster than he/she wants to. But on the job, a sudden change in production demands frequently leads to workers, especially material handlers, being pushed to work faster and longer. The pace of work outstrips the ability to do the job right and, more importantly, to pay proper attention to the task. In the end, rushing errors are almost always caused by a lack of attention when it is needed.
In the examples listed above, the workers likely felt that they did not have time to stabilize the hand-truck load or the placement of their hands. Sometimes, it is even more simple than that: the faster people work, the quicker they get tired. The more fatigued they are, the more likely it is that their attention will fail them in a crucial moment.
Rushing is almost always a structural issue. Relatively few incidents occur because someone felt like working at unsafe speeds. There is almost always a catalyst, whether it is a supervisor yelling at them to hurry up, an improperly designed workplace that requires workers to rush from one place to the next or some other structural impetus to work too quickly.
Let us turn back to the autobahn for a moment. While some drivers go as fast as they want, most will drive fairly closely to the advised speed. Knowing this, the posted speed is within a safe enough range for the majority of drivers, acting as an influence on their speed without restricting faster road users or forcing slower drivers to move at speeds they cannot handle. In more dangerous sections of the highway, speed limits are strictly enforced to protect construction workers and other vulnerable people. But predominantly, drivers’ personal awareness is left to lead the way, aided with some heavy-handed nudges from legislators.
Contrast this with the workplace where hard-and-fast rules abound. They exist with good reason, but those reasons are often unclear to workers, who often view them as arcane and restrictive. The spirit of those rules—to work at a safe pace and protect people from injury—frequently clashes with production demands handed down from upper management.
Managing Human Factors
What does a safety manager to do? You do not want to and cannot
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just remove various safety regulations and make it a free-for-all. You can explain to workers why certain rules exist so that they feel less constrained by them. You can also solicit feedback from workers regarding what makes them feel like they need to rush while moving goods throughout the facility. Frequently, they will identify delays, errors, troublesome locations and other issues that you were not fully aware of.
You can also let people’s personal awareness carry the day while applying greater control on more dangerous areas of work. If you cannot stop your company from making workers rush, then you can at least train workers to recognize and respond appropriately when they are rushing, which will mitigate some of the risks that it poses. This type of worker education typically falls under the umbrella of human factors training and can have a notable impact. You already know the places in the workplace and times in the production schedule that people are most likely to get hurt. They may be permanent problem spots, or, like inclement weather, may fluctuate from week to week. Focus your interventions—like toolbox talks, walk-throughs and additional hazard reminders—in those areas.
Of course, driving on the autobahn is a lot different than navigating the typical American workplace. For starters, people driving on the autobahn are not usually towing a trailer full of goods, looking out for pedestrians and do not have someone breathing down their neck. Roadway engineers designed the autobahn knowing that people will speed, ensuring lanes are wide enough, corners smooth enough and signs large enough. Drivers are not allowed to backup, do U-turns or stop on the highway to chat with a co-worker—all of which are things that happen in a dynamic, complex workplace environment.
In a similar vein, safety professionals should observe and design the flow of materials from and to various places at their facility to be as barrier-free as possible, by reducing blind spots, separating pedestrians and vehicles when possible and taking other engineering steps. Workers, and material handlers in particular, will inevitably need to rush. Workplace design should also account for how people actually operate. This is why human factor training is useful for material handlers, when rushing cannot be prevented, it gives them the tools to manage the pace of work more safely.
Ray Prest is the Director of Marketing at SafeStart.
OCTOBER 2021 | Occupational Health & Safety 19
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