- Fact: Did you know that working in a wooded area can lead to tick borne diseases?
- Fact: Did you know that kitchen equipment exceeds the maximum noise level for workplaces?
- Fact: Did you know that a back pain is different from a back strain?
Hey everyone. It’s Jason and this post is gonna be about workplace Safety, our latest Maker unit. Seeing that we are all at the working age, our teacher and the curriculum thought it would be a great idea to take a quick lesson on workplace safety. Before I start, we were tasked to make one piece of media to show our learning. I created an info graphic to show what I had learned and to display it in a clean, well designed way.
Now, workplace safety is serious stuff. There are many hazards associated with many different jobs and occupations. Every workplace has its own dangers. For example, if you’re working as a dishwasher, the biggest hazard is cutting yourself on the knives and other sharp objects. If you’re working at a lumber mill, one hazard is the use of chainsaws and other power tools to cut down trees.
However, there are many lesser known, equally dangerous risks at every workplace. While washing dishes, you may cut yourself, but the building you are in might have been built before 1975, leading to asbestos. You may severely injure yourself cutting down trees, but there is also a threat of tick-borne diseases.
To fully understand dangers in the workplace, we watched a slightly disturbing workplace safety video. You might be asking, “Why I see it disturbing?” Well, it featured LIVE RECREATIONS. So while this woman was talking about losing a finger, it was happening ON THE SCREEN. However, it was still pretty educational, and gave us some great stats, such as 34 young workers are injured every working day.
Now, onto less grisly topics.
Many young workers are injured due to lack of instruction, even though they have the right to refuse work they believe is unsafe. The mandatory three steps for new workers are pretty simple.
Orientation: This is the introduction to the job. This is usually done in big groups and a PowerPoint or booklets are shown to the new workers.
Training: This is more specific, and the role of everyone at their different jobs is explored thoroughly.
Supervision: At the end of it all, a more experienced worker will follow the younger worker around and help them out, completing the process for training.
We learned this through a series of videos (thankfully not so grisly) that gave an overview of this whole process. We also took some notes on videos detailing the instruction process for other local businesses. I chose PlayLand/the PNE, and I learned a lot from their orientation, ride instruction and training, demonstrations, and the supervision.
Now, workplace safety was a pretty interesting unit. Yes, nastier topics like workplace injuries can be interesting to me, but I really liked this whole unit. Although I don’t have a job yet, this unit set me up pretty well, teaching me to refuse unsafe work and to have a sharp eye for possible catastrophes. That’s a big part of why I like this unit. It’s something that will undoubtedly help me in the future, when I become a working man.
The way this unit was presented was also pretty interesting (sorry, I’m using this word a lot). The videos we watched helped our understanding a lot, and it was a cool way to deliver them, because all of the training videos were from local businesses we knew.
Altogether, the workplace safety unit may have been short, but it was incredibly informative and was something I enjoyed.
This is Jason, signing off.