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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The U.S. National Safety Council reports that every seven seconds, a worker is injured on the job. This adds up to 510 workplace injuries per hour, 12,300 per day, 86,500 a week and 4.5 million injuries a year at a total cost of $161.5 billion. Promoting workplace safety is a critical step in minimizing the negative impact of workplace injuries and accidents on productivity, profit and human life. A critical element in sustainably promoting workplace safety as a valued priority is to develop an organizational climate through integrated training, engaged leadership and accountability.
Abraham Maslow, the American psychologist most widely known for developing the Hierarchy of Needs model, suggested the five needs that motivate people: physiological, safety-security, social-belongingness, esteem and self-actualization.
Maslow defined safety-security as protection from physical and emotional harm. Such protection on the job constitutes workplace safety, which we focus on here by looking at three real-life accidents that resulted in disastrous outcomes for worker health, lost productivity and organizational failure. We then present the current state of workplace accidents and injuries in the United States, identify sources of harm in the workplace and discuss ways to reduce them with three concrete ways to create a climate for worker safety.
Real-life workplace accidents
Incident No. i. In 2014, a bakery in the U.K. decided to remove a pillar from the ceiling of its engineering stores to create a new walkway. Tom Williams, 65, was a member of the team assigned this task. According to www.thompsons tradeunion.law, the bakery did not carry out a risk assessment to highlight the potential dangers of removing the pillar or give Williams and his team training on how to complete the job. Williams used an angle grinder to remove the bottom section of the pillar. In the process, the top section of the structure fell from the ceiling, striking him on the head and causing fractures to his neck and swelling to his brain.
Williams fell into a coma, part of his skull was removed and he spent seven months in the hospital. He now suffers from aphasia, the loss of ability to understand or express speech caused by brain damage, and requires 24-hour care. He also has dysphasia, a language disorder marked by deficiency...