-Carola Mittag
As I’m writing today, I have the sun shining over my shoulder and the first “heat wave” after a long and hard winter. It is March 6th, and the temperature has hit a balmy 16o C in an area that normally has temperatures hovering just below OO C. The snow is all but gone and the birds are singing through my open window. It is a good day to look forward.
The pandemic has changed the way we live, what we do, how we work and helped many of us prioritize what is and isn’t important. I believe we’ve all heard this statement and its many variations ad nauseum by now.
My priorities have been to purge, clear out unneeded, useless, irrelevant, redundant, immaterial, extra and extraneous “stuff”. In other words, a lot of my things have come out of the closet. Clothes that were once important and perceived to be needed in the business world are no longer relevant in my retirement.
In life there are many different closets that need to be purged. Our personal closets can be the obvious clothes closets or our private closets, including our mental and our physical states. But we also have fun closets, recreational closets, relationship closets and work closets because our lives are compartmentalized into these different areas. How you relate to your personal closets, how you use them and how you purge yourself of unneeded “stuff” in those closets is as individual as you.
Let’s look at our work closet, that part of our lives that takes up 90,000 hours for the average person over their lifetime. Because we spend so much of our time at work, we need to ensure that that time is well-spent, productive and rewarding. And, because our work responsibilities are diverse, whether as an employer, manager, supervisor or worker everybody approaches their work closet from their own perspective and according to their own needs.
What is common to everyone who works at any level is the need to return home safely. This means purging those things that put them at risk of illness, injury or death. It’s obvious that some jobs carry more risk of injury or illness by the very nature of the work and the equipment needed to carry out that work. In this case there must be a purge of broken equipment and/or processes that endanger workers as well as attitudes and beliefs that are no longer relevant in today’s workplaces.
Equipment and processes improvement are obvious fixes; however, they are dependent on the attitudes and beliefs of those in a position to facilitate those fixes, the employer or supervisor. They are also dependent on the conviction and actions of workers to refuse to work if they feel themselves endangered. It is every worker’s right to know about any dangers related to their jobs, to receive training relevant to doing their jobs safely and to refuse to work under dangerous conditions or when asked to use faulty, poorly maintained equipment. If these three worker rights are not upheld, then health and safety law (the Occupational Health and Safety Act – OHSA) is being broken.
Protecting yourselves from unhealthy and dangerous work is everyone’s responsibility and right! Allow yourself to purge your work closet of anything that might endanger you!
Watch for next month’s Blog published in the first week of April.
Sincerely,
Carola Mittag
Consultant and Editor for Mentor Safety Consultants Inc.