Safety First or else...

''Safety First'' or ''Think Safety'' posters are usually prominently displayed at construction sites and manufacturing concerns. Does the display of posters alone make the workplace safer? No. It takes lots of education and training to get the message across to the workers so that safety becomes part of their working life and their second nature.

Safety has to be central to what they do at the work sites and has to remain in their subconscious minds. It requires them to have a sense of danger or hazards before they can be safety-conscious.

I used to manage a manufacturing concern in Indonesia, most of the workers in the factory were recruited from several major cities of Indonesia and have been put through intensive training as they did not have much experience working in metal industry. One day, while at work in the factory, a stack of sheet metals one of the workers was pushing on a trolley suddenly started sliding down, instead of running for his life, this worker stretched out his hands trying to stop the sliding sharp-edged metal plates. Obviously, his wrists were cut and were bleeding profusely. He was immediately sent to the hospital. This is an obvious case of workers not having a strong sense of danger- or safety-consciousness.