Cutting corners can make you bleed

Hey, I sat in on Modern’s Lift Truck Customer Satisfaction webcast. The discussion focused on stuff I can relate to. Dumb stuff, like companies cheaping-out on lift truck operator training and why operators don’t wear their restraints. I just saw another report that said workers are pretty dumb about safety in general, not just around lift trucks.

Kimberly-Clark Professional did a survey at the 2008 National Safety Council (NSC) Congress and 89 percent of safety professionals polled said lots of their workers don’t wear personal protective equipment when they should. So why don’t these safety guys do something about it? Get this: it costs too much to do anything about it. Thirty-four percent of these people said the economy affected their worker safety training programs or resources. 63 percent of them said because of the economy they had less money for education and training.  42 percent said they had fewer people to handle safety training. 33 percent said business concerns get more attention than safety concerns during tough economic times.

Denial, denial, denial. Sounds like these folks found a pretty good excuse to keep doing stupid stuff. In a way, I respect that. Stupid stuff is my job. But what’s really stupid is saying you can’t afford safety. The Kimberly-Clark folks cite Liberty Mutual stats showing work-related injuries in the U.S. cost more than $50 billion a year. Wonder how companies afford that!

How’s safety at your place? Is the economy making your company cut corners and do other dumb stuff? Blog to me about it. I want to hear what kind of competition I have out there.