Setting a Good Example

We sometimes seem to be living in a copycat world. If one automaker’s leasing offer attracts consumer interest, every other car company will soon be riding the same bandwagon. No sooner does the latest buzz-word appear on one food or detergent label than the shelves are filled with products proclaiming "lo-fat," "no enzymes," or "organic and biodegradable." It’s clear, though, that what they’re really trying to copy is success and profit.

Why mention this in a talk about safety? Because although we may occasionally be tempted to take an unsafe shortcut just because we’ve seen someone else do it and get away with it, we’re more likely to do things safely because we’ve seen others doing them that way. That’s one of the fringe benefits of doing things the safe way. We all profit from each other’s good examples.

New employees certainly benefit by seeing operations conducted the safe way. As you all know from experience, people who are new on the job take a while to adjust and to discover how they fit into the overall operation.

New employees who have never held a job before—or who were employed by a firm that had a weak safety program—will probably need considerable safety instruction. The company will provide instruction and training, of course, but important knowledge will also come from observing and talking to fellow workers. These newcomers’ early impressions of you will be at least partially formed through these contacts and observations. Likewise, newcomers whose former employers did emphasize safety will probably think more of you personally if you measure up to the caliber of people they are accustomed to working with. 

"Don’t do as I do; do as I say" is a pretty tired expression. It became tired because we all have repeated it many times—not just verbally but in our actions, which we all know speak louder than words.

When we leave our safety glasses resting on our foreheads rather than in place over our eyes, or when we kick an empty milk carton under a bench rather than pick it up, we’re not selling safety effectively. Our actions are saying: "I believe in wearing eye protection but not in protecting my eyes. And I know that trash can cause a tripping accident, but it isn’t important enough to make me pick it up."

There’s another angle to good examples. Too often people dress to impress others with their good taste rather than their knowledge of safety. Wearing rings, bracelets, and other ornaments is dangerous around machinery and on jobs in which it’s possible for jewelry to catch on objects and cause injury to the wearer. Long sleeves, floppy pant legs, and long hair can be hazardous on some jobs, too.

So we should always dress for the job. Our image as a fashion expert may suffer, but it’ll give way to the more important and more beneficial image of safety.

Some of us probably feel we have already set good examples for safety, and perhaps we have. But consider just for a moment how, when we think about an accident, it’s usually in regard to someone else. Accidents are a reality. Make your personal safety just as real, and you’ll have a good chance of not becoming that "other person" to whom accidents are always happening.

We might also remember that our children someday will be entering the workforce. They, like the newcomers on the job, can benefit by our actions that exemplify safety-consciousness.

Most of us try to do make a point of showing to our kids the safe way to cross streets or how to light matches when they’re an appropriate age. If, through the years, they also learn from you how to use a ladder correctly, or that it’s a good practice to keep tools in their proper places, or that there’s a right way to lift things, your good example has given them an additional opportunity for a better, safer life in the future.