June is National Safety Month

For those who aren't aware, June has been declared National Safety Month. Hopefully, that means that some of our over-worked safety professionals will re-charge their batteries with a well-deserved trip to the ASSE Professional Development Conference in Seattle. For the rest of us, we'll have to settle for Steamboat Days and thinking about new ways to motivate our employees to work safely.

The IA-IL Safety Council has placed a number of educational and motivational materials on their web site www.iisc.org for members. If your company is not a member of the IA-IL Safety Council, perhaps it is time to consider a membership. The cost is based on the number of employees in your company, and can easily be recovered in savings on training materials, conferences, and promotional items.

It is interesting how media focus influences the perceptions of the public. The National Safety Council recently conducted a survey of workers' greatest safety concerns. Violent crime and natural disasters tied as the leading concerns at 59% of workers surveyed. Unintentional injuries followed at 55%. The Council points out that in reality, 16,134 people were murdered and 234 people died in natural disasters while more than 110,000 died in accidents (2004 data). The survey also points out that most people feel safer in their home than they do at work. The numbers show that in 2004, about 5,000 lost their lives at work, while off-the-job injuries claimed more than 44,000. Of course, most of these incidents don't make the news.