Blog Post 2

This week in class I learned a lot of things. First off, I enjoyed our guest speaker. I have never really considered human resources as a career. Although I don’t really see myself in that occupation, I felt it was good to understand the background and the daily schedule of somebody who works in that career. I enjoyed the stories he told. I have had some similar strange things happen in some of the companies that I have worked for and it is good to know how those issues are dealt with.
For my discussion topic we discussed the view of OSHA in the workplace. Most people view OSHA as an annoyance that makes the job take longer and can also make it cost more because of fines. I was wondering what could be done to help employers and employees have a different attitude towards OSHA. Even in companies that value safety, OSHA still seems to be a pain. The conclusion that we came to as a group is that employers needs to have a better safety attitude and train their employees on proper safety practices. As this happens, hopefully they will feel different about OSHA and realize that they are there to help keep people safe and alive. I am studying construction management so safety is always a hot topic for discussion.
I used to have a job doing lighting maintenance for commercial buildings. We often worked with live power and up high on ladders. We would have weekly safety meetings where we would be rewarded for being safe and taught some safety principles but as soon as we left the office things would change. It was more about getting the job done quickly instead of focusing on being safe. Because of this we did some very unsafe activities. Often we weren’t provided with a safe way of doing things. For example repairing lights in stairwells presents a challenge because you can’t set up a ladder on stairs. We often ended up rigging up things that were not safe to accomplish the task. On the other hand, if we were to try to do everything as safe as possible, we probably wouldn’t get enough work done and the company probably wouldn’t be able to succeed. This presents a struggle for employers. There is a definite balance between safety and making money. Usually doing things the safe way adds time to the project.
Another topic that this brings up is the cost of being unsafe. Aside from having to pay workers comp if an injury occurs, OSHA can impose some hefty fines. One of my friends was doing something unsafe and his employer was fined over on hundred thousand dollars. I don’t think this changed my friend’s attitude toward safety. It probably prevented him from doing the unsafe thing again but probably only to stop from getting fired. It did change his attitude towards OSHA. I wonder if OSHA could do something more effective than imposing fines like suspending workers or something. This might change the attitude people have.