Question

Application Case The New Safety and Health Program

At first glance, a dot-com company is one of the last places you’d expect to find potential safety and health hazards—or so the owners of LearnInMotion.com thought. There’s no danger of moving machinery, no high-pressure lines, no cutting or heavy lifting, and certainly no forklift trucks. However, there are safety and health problems. In terms of accident-causing conditions, for instance, the one thing dot-com companies have are cables and wires. Even with extensive use of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, there are cables connecting computers to screens and to servers, and in many cases cables running from some computers to separate printers. There are 10 telephones in this particular office, all on 15-foot power lines that always seem to be snaking around chairs and tables. There is, in fact, an astonishing amount of cable considering this is an office with so-called wireless connections and with fewer than 10 employees. When the installation specialists wired the office (for electricity, high-speed cable, phone lines, burglar alarms, and computers), they estimated they used well over 5 miles of cables of one sort or another. Most of these are hidden in the walls or ceilings, but many of them snake their way from desk to desk, and under and over doorways. Several employees have tried to reduce the nuisance of having to trip over wires whenever they get up by putting their plastic chair pads over the wires closest to them. However, that still leaves many wires unprotected. In other cases, they brought in their own packing tape and tried to tape down the wires in those spaces where they’re particularly troublesome, such as across doorways. The cables and wires are only one of the more obvious potential accident-causing conditions. The firm’s programmer, before he left the firm, had tried to repair the main server while the unit was still electrically alive. To this day, they’re not sure exactly where he stuck the screwdriver, but the result was that he was “blown across the room,” as one manager put it. He was all right, but it was still a scare. And while they haven’t received any claims yet, every employee spends hours at his or her computer, so carpal tunnel syndrome is a risk, as are a variety of other problems such as eyestrain and strained backs. One recent accident particularly scared the owners. The firm uses independent contractors to deliver the firm’s books and DVD-based courses in New York and two other cities. A delivery person was riding his bike east at the intersection of Second Avenue and East 64th Street in New York when he was struck by a car going south on Second Avenue. Luckily, he was not hurt, but the bike’s front wheel was wrecked, and the narrow escape got the firm’s two owners, Mel and Maria, thinking about their lack of a safety program. It’s not just the physical conditions that concern the two owners. They also have some concerns about potential health problems such as job stress and burnout. Although the business may be (relatively) safe with respect to physical conditions, it is also relatively stressful in terms of the demands it makes in hours and deadlines. It is not unusual for employees to get to work by 7:30 or 8 in the morning and to work through until 11 or 12 at night, at least 5 and sometimes 6 or 7 days per week. The bottom line is that both Maria and Mel feel quite strongly that they need to do something about implementing a health and safety plan. Now, they want you, their management consultants, to help them do it. Here’s what they want you to do for them.

Questions

1. 16-11. Based upon your knowledge of health and safety matters and your actual observations of operations that are similar to theirs, make a list of the potential hazardous conditions employees and others face at LearnInMotion.com. What should they do to reduce the potential severity of the top five hazards?

2. 16-12. Would it be advisable for them to set up a procedure for screening out stress-prone or accident-prone individuals? Why or why not? If so, how should they screen them?

3. 16-13. Write a short position paper on the subject, “What should we do to get all our employees to behave more safely at work?”

4. 16-14. Based on what you know and on what other dot-coms are doing, write a short position paper on the subject, “What can we do to reduce the potential problems of stress and burnout in our company?”

Answer 1

Potential hazard at Learn iN motion .com :-

Following are the potential hazards at LearninMotion.com:-

1) Accident causing conditions due to unwrapped wires .

2) Carpel tunnel syndrome

3) Eye problems

4) Back problems and muscular pain

5) Accident probability of the DVD delivery boy

6) Job stress due to long working hours

Methods to reduce such hazards :-

Following are some methods to reduce such hazards :-

1) Using cable spegehheti to clutch all the wires properly.

2) Provision of ice packs and tea breaks for employees relaxation.

3) Provision of comfortable chairs , properly positioned table and comfort cushioning to reduce back problems

4) Proper road training of delivery boy to avoid mishaps

5) Provision of monthly sick leaves and weekly offs

Screening out stress prone individuals:-

​​​​​The company should screen out stress prone employees through :-

a) Identification of stress prone job position in an organization

b) Periodic employee surveys

This helps the organization in following ways :-

a) Reduction of employee turnover

b) Forming a cordial and balanced environment in an organization.

c) Increasing employee productivity

What should we do to get all our employees to behave more safely on work :-

Following are some ways to ensure safety at work :-

1) Proper training and induction of employees

2) Provision of safety equipments

3) Periodic reviews on the safety measurements

4) Use of good quality wires and machinery to avoid accidents.

What can we do to burn out potential problem of stress :-

To burn out potential problems of stress we must :-

1) Make a provision of paid leaves

2) Provision of sick leaves

3) Weekly offs

4) Small tea and coffee breaks

5) Making the employee work in shifts

6) Not overloading work on an employee.

7) Not setting unacheivable targets for the employees