Safety Awareness
Taking Shortcuts
Safety Awareness is about ongoing awareness. This may be more difficult for experienced employees as they begin to get comfortable working around dangerous equipment, working at elevated heights and generally become less cautious. Experienced employees may begin to neglect safe practices in lieu of faster, more efficient methods, otherwise known as a shortcut. Taking a shortcut once with no negative consequences makes it easier to repeat those shortcuts and look for new ones. Many times, experienced employees are also tasked with training new employees. Shortcuts may inadvertently become part of the training process.
- Employees who have good safety awareness know the dangers of taking shortcuts and the ultimate consequences.
- If you are a new or inexperienced employee, don’t take shortcuts. Concentrate, hold the line and complete the job the way you were trained to do it.
- If you are an experienced employee, don’t take shortcuts. The time saved will eventually catch up to you, sometimes with terrible consequences. It’s just not worth taking the risk.
- If you are training new or inexperienced employees, train them to do the job the right way. Teach them how to do the job the way it was designed and how to do it efficiently and effectively, without shortcuts that could injure or maim them for life.