Holiday Safety – Insights From Safety Motivational SpeakerJohn Drebinger

Holiday Safety – Insights From Safety Motivational SpeakerJohn Drebinger

As a safety motivational speaker I point out any time you can make safety relevant in the lives of your employees, you are improving their safety performance on the job. Ideally, everyone focuses on safety in everything they do. The broader you make their safety focus, the more likely they will make safe choices on the job.

Safety and Gift Giving

During the last few weeks of the year, many of us will be giving gifts to family members. Now would be a good time to remind your workers safety is a 24 hour a day activity. No one wants to buy a gift for a child that ultimately causes them to sustain an injury. Here are a few topics you could use in an article or safety talk:

• Is the gift age appropriate? This isn’t about how much smarter your child or grandchild is. It is often about safety issues that either deal with size or ability to make decisions.
• Does this gift require the use of Personal Protective Equipment? And have you included this with the gift? Giving a skateboard is great but don’t forget the knee and elbow pads and a helmet.
• Have you checked consumer sites regarding the safety of the item? This can be a simple Google search listing the item and asking about its safety.
• Give the gift recipient a safety briefing or tailgate talk about the safety issues involved in the use of the gift. For years, in Scouting, I used places we camped to talk with scouts about safety. Different sites required a different safety briefing, just as different tasks on the job require a different discussion. This was a great place to develop my skills as a safety motivational speaker.
• Are you buying something too cheap to be safe? A BMX bike designed for riding on dirt trails needs much more quality materials than a bike designed to be ridden on pavement. I was looking at a product recall for a push scooter. The handle had a tendency to break off leaving a post in the path of a falling rider to be impaled on. As with much of safety, the investment of a few more dollars or a few minutes of time can make all the difference.
• You can think of many more ideas depending on your regional situation.

Activities You May Not Have Done For Awhile

People take vacation time around the holidays and often participate in sports or activities they might not have done in awhile. Remind them of the importance of warming up the muscles they aren’t accustomed to using. Just as they should stretch before work the same should apply to holiday activities.

Safety Benefits Your Family

The best reason to have this discussion with your employees is to instill in them that safety can improve the quality of their life at work and at home. I would remind them an additional benefit of working for your company is they keep their family members safe. Because safety is something they learn about at work, they and their families are better off. Each of them becomes a safety motivational speaker to their friends and family.

Have a Safe and Fun Holiday Season

When you need solutions for your safety challenges, give Diane Weiss a call at 209-745-9419 and bring safety motivational speaker John to your site to discover injury-preventing solutions. You can email her at diane@drebinger.com
Until next week,
I’ll be, “Watching Out For Everyone’s Safety™”
John
© 2017 John Drebinger Presentations
Permission to use granted when credited and contact information included. www.drebinger.com +1 209.745.9419