Today my friend Teresa posted the following on Twitter:

Accidents are never funny. And the picture of the broken chair can give you an idea of how serious this could have been.

I immediately tweeted her back asking why she didn’t routinely check her chair. “I need to do that?” she wondered.

I’ve worked around equipment my whole career, and it is easy to see how a lawn mower or a bulldozer can be dangerous, but you rarely think of office furniture as hazardous. Have you ever:

1. Sat in a chair with a missing wheel?
2. Rocked back in a four legged chair and balanced on the back two legs?
3. Left a file or desk drawer open?

These are the obvious examples. Teresa found out that the failure was the screws stripped out of their plastic anchor points.

Anything with moving parts wears. Mostly, wear is a slow and nearly invisible process, almost like aging. But it happens. Anything that you use that has moving parts is worth inspecting once in a while.

So before you sit in that office chair next time, take a few seconds to make sure it’s safe. I’m pretty sure Teresa will.

Tools. They make work easier. The right tool, applied in the right way, with the right level of skill, can make even the most difficult jobs simpler. Each tool brings us an advantage. In physical terms, it is usually a mechanical advantage. But never a thinking advantage. Tools sometimes make us think less. We don’t…

I’ve commented several times about the way we measure safety. Many companies measure accumulated hours worked without incident, but injury rates, or failure rates, are the most common benchmark. We look at the number of failures of the system compared to the number of hours worked in the same time period. This leads to a…

The Consumer Products Safety Commission was established to help protect us from design of faulty products. Or, as stated on their website, the commission “…is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of injury or death from thousands of types of consumer products under the agency’s jurisdiction.” Much of what they do is an…

This summer will mark 24 years of marriage for my wife and I. We hadn’t been dating very long when  she told me her primary rule: Love me, love my kids. Her children were 8 and 4 at the time, and it was clear that if we were going to continue a relationship, I would…

Recently I wrote about my experience with safety obligations. These were three statements that all employees where I work are expected to follow. In writing, and in discussion, they seem clear and easy, but we all have to learn to implement them successfully. When I worked in a facility that put these in place, I…

One of the things that struck me as odd when I first starting working in a manufacturing facility is the way we measured safety. The big sign on the way in to the plant indicated the number of days since the last accident. A reminder that unfortunately was set back to “1″ far too often….

In the past I have written about luck and it’s role in safety. We think we can control everything, but there is very little we truly control. I’ve worked around big machines my whole life. Machines don’t kill people, but people die from making mistakes while working with them. Machines are totally unforgiving of human error, which…

In my two most recent posts, I explained that I have seen safety performance improve when management puts in place a series of obligations – and then does everything they can to support them. I explained the first two obligations, which are: Refuse to do work that you cannot perform safely. If you see someone…

The other day I took up the challenge from Trish to help managers consider what they can do to assure that we are not just compliant with safety issues, but also prepared and actively managing safety. What I have seen work is embodied in three obligations that belong to each and every employee. The first…