Workplace Safety - 5 Common Issues

Ensur­ing work­place safe­ty and avoid­ing work­place injury are impor­tant ele­ments of work­place effi­cien­cy. Here are some com­mon haz­ards and stan­dards for haz­ard com­mu­ni­ca­tion (HAZ­COM).

Video Tran­script:

Speak­er 1:

Budd Group team­mates, we’ve made it to July. Halfway through the year. So for this month we’re going to do some­thing that’s a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent for our safe­ty video. Using the feed­back that you guys have giv­en us, we’re going to go through the five things that it takes for the Budd Group to hon­or our mis­sion state­ment, which is to be a God-hon­or­ing com­pa­ny of excel­lence that safe­ly deliv­ers facil­i­ty sup­port solu­tions to meet all of our cus­tomer needs. So here we go.

Speak­er 1:

Oh man. Slip­ping and falling is one of the biggest prob­lems that we have here at the Budd Group so there’s a few things you can do to keep your­self safe as a new employ­ee. If you’re one of our land­scap­ing folks, this means mak­ing sure you’re wear­ing boots that are laced up nice and tight to avoid slip­ping and also being real­ly care­ful when you’re on nice grassy slopes because that’s where we see a lot of slips and falls for those folks. For our jan­i­to­r­i­al employ­ees, this means mak­ing sure that you are wear­ing slip-resis­tant shoes any­time that you are doing wet work or in a wet area. If you don’t have slip-resis­tant shoes, make sure you tell your man­ag­er so that they can equip you with the slip-resis­tant shoe cov­ers that the Budd Group offers. And final­ly, to keep us, our employ­ees and our clients safe, any­time we are doing wet work, make sure you use as many wet floor signs as you can to keep peo­ple away from that area.

Speak­er 1:

Oh man. Well, that leads me to point num­ber two of the first key of stay­ing safe at the Budd Group, always watch your step to make sure you can avoid trip­ping. Also, any­time you’re com­ing down a stair­case such as this, make sure that you use the hand rail even if this means going back and mak­ing anoth­er trip so that your hands aren’t full. And any­time you’re walk­ing in an area that has side­walks, please stay on the side­walks because you nev­er know what kind of holes or gaps might be off the side­walks. And final­ly, the most impor­tant piece to mak­ing sure that you can avoid trip­ping is wear­ing prop­er footwear.

Speak­er 1:

The final piece to the first key of Budd Group safe­ty is avoid­ing falls, specif­i­cal­ly falls from an ele­vat­ed sur­face. Some­times your new role here at the Budd Group may require that you do work from a lad­der. If that’s the case, make sure you exam­ine the lad­der to make sure it’s in good shape and use it exact­ly as the man­u­fac­tur­er’s warn­ing label asks you to and always main­tain three points of con­tact. This may mean one hand and two feet, or if you’re climb­ing the lad­der, it might mean two hands and one foot. Final­ly, if you have to work from any oth­er ele­vat­ed sur­faces, make sure your man­ag­er has explained exact­ly how to oper­ate from those ser­vices safely.

Speak­er 1:

What in the world is in this thing? Uh-oh. Key num­ber two to stay­ing safe here at the Budd Group is to avoid sprains and strains. The most com­mon way that we see this hap­pen here at the Budd Group is try­ing to lift, pull, or push things that are too heavy for you to do by your­self. So if you find your­self in this sit­u­a­tion, make sure that you ask a team­mate for help or find an appro­pri­ate piece of equip­ment to help you move what­ev­er object it is that you’re try­ing to move.

Speak­er 1:

Anoth­er com­mon injury that we see here at the Budd Group are cuts and lac­er­a­tions, espe­cial­ly to the hands and fin­gers. And that leads us to key num­ber three for you being safe here at the Budd Group, avoid­ing these types of injuries and acci­dents. One of the ways that we see this acci­dent hap­pen often is when our employ­ees take their hands and put it in a mov­ing area or an area with mov­ing parts. For instance, on a mow­er like this, we always need to avoid putting our hands any­where near the motor, espe­cial­ly while it’s run­ning. And this includes putting our hands under­neath the deck of the motor as well while it is run­ning. Any­thing that could be run­ning might be real­ly dan­ger­ous to our hands and fingers.

Speak­er 1:

For our jan­i­to­r­i­al folks, the same rule applies if we’re oper­at­ing a piece of machin­ery that has mov­ing parts, we need to keep our hands away from that area. If you notice that a guard is miss­ing or some­thing that should be keep­ing your hands pro­tect­ed, please noti­fy your man­ag­er imme­di­ate­ly so that they can get that replaced.

Speak­er 1:

And final­ly, if you’re using a knife, make sure you always cut away from your­self and nev­er cut towards your­self or towards anoth­er per­son. And one oth­er key thing to keep­ing your hands and fin­gers safe is if you’re doing a job that requires per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment such as gloves, make sure that you have that equip­ment on.

Speak­er 1:

The fourth key to safe­ty here at the Budd Group is under­stand­ing the chem­i­cals that you’re going to be required to use to per­form your job. For the land­scap­ing folks, this might be some type of weed deter­rent or weed killer. And for the jan­i­to­r­i­al folks, this may be as sim­ple as a clean­ing chem­i­cal. But either way, it’s real­ly impor­tant to know what chem­i­cals you’re going to be using and how to use them safe­ly. One of the things that each clos­et and each shop should be equipped with is a poster that looks like this, and all this does is tell you if you want to learn more about the chem­i­cal you’re using, you can go to bud​dgroups​ds​.com or call 1 – 866-BUDD-911. Addi­tion­al­ly, it’s impor­tant to know what PPE, or per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment, you need to wear to han­dle those chem­i­cals safe­ly. And one place we can go to do that is our safe­ty data sheet binder, which looks like this. Inside this binder you’re going to find every­thing you need to know about all the chem­i­cals that you’re using.

Speak­er 1:

The safe­ty data sheets, also known as the SDS, were cre­at­ed to inform us about the required pre­cau­tions and safe­ty mea­sures that are required for spe­cif­ic chem­i­cals and haz­ards. Thanks to the Glob­al­ly Har­mo­nized Sys­tem, or GHS, this has been reduced to a sim­ple and con­sis­tent 16 sec­tions. Let’s review each sec­tion so that you know how to read this infor­ma­tion and can stay safe.

Speak­er 1:

Sec­tion one is iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. This sec­tion iden­ti­fies the chem­i­cal on the SDS, as well as the rec­om­mend­ed uses. It also pro­vides the essen­tial con­tact infor­ma­tion of the sup­pli­er. Sec­tion two is haz­ard or haz­ards iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. This sec­tion iden­ti­fies the haz­ards of the chem­i­cal pre­sent­ed on the SDS and the appro­pri­ate warn­ing infor­ma­tion asso­ci­at­ed with those haz­ards. The third sec­tion is called composition/​information on ingre­di­ents. This sec­tion iden­ti­fies the ingre­di­ents con­tained in the prod­uct indi­cat­ed on the SDS, includ­ing impu­ri­ties and sta­bi­liz­ing addi­tives. This sec­tion includes infor­ma­tion on sub­stances, mix­tures, and all chem­i­cals where a trade secret is claimed.

Speak­er 1:

The fourth sec­tion is first aid mea­sures. This sec­tion describes the ini­tial care that should be giv­en by untrained respon­ders to an indi­vid­ual who has been exposed to the chem­i­cal. Sec­tion five is fire-fight­ing mea­sures. This sec­tion pro­vides rec­om­men­da­tions for fight­ing a fire caused by this chem­i­cal. The sixth sec­tion is called acci­den­tal release mea­sures. This sec­tion pro­vides rec­om­men­da­tions on the appro­pri­ate response to spills, leaks, or releas­es, includ­ing con­tain­ment and cleanup prac­tices to pre­vent or min­i­mize expo­sure to peo­ple, prop­er­ties or the envi­ron­ment. It may also include rec­om­men­da­tions, dis­tin­guish­ing between respons­es for large and small spills where the spill vol­ume has a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the haz­ard. Sec­tion sev­en, han­dling and stor­age. This sec­tion pro­vides guid­ance on the safe han­dling prac­tices and con­di­tions for safe stor­age of chem­i­cals. Sec­tion eight, expo­sure con­trols and per­son­al pro­tec­tion. This sec­tion indi­cates the expo­sure lim­its, engi­neer­ing con­trols, and per­son­al pro­tec­tive mea­sures that can be used to min­i­mize work­er exposure.

Speak­er 1:

Sec­tion nine, phys­i­cal and chem­i­cal prop­er­ties. This sec­tion iden­ti­fies phys­i­cal and chem­i­cal prop­er­ties asso­ci­at­ed with the sub­stance or mix­ture. Sec­tion 10, sta­bil­i­ty and reac­tiv­i­ty. This sec­tion describes the reac­tiv­i­ty haz­ards of the chem­i­cal and the chem­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty infor­ma­tion. This sec­tion is bro­ken into three parts, reac­tiv­i­ty, chem­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty, and oth­er. Sec­tion 11 is called tox­i­co­log­i­cal infor­ma­tion. This sec­tion iden­ti­fies tox­i­co­log­i­cal and health effects infor­ma­tion or it indi­cates that such data is not avail­able. The 12^th sec­tion is called eco­log­i­cal infor­ma­tion. This sec­tion pro­vides infor­ma­tion to eval­u­ate the envi­ron­men­tal impact of the chem­i­cals if it were released into the envi­ron­ment. Sec­tion 13 is called dis­pos­al con­sid­er­a­tions. This sec­tion pro­vides guid­ance on prop­er dis­pos­al prac­tices, recy­cling, or recla­ma­tion of the chem­i­cals or its con­tain­er and safe han­dling prac­tices. To min­i­mize expo­sure, this sec­tion should also refer the read­er to sec­tion eight expo­sure con­trols and per­son­al pro­tec­tion of the SDS.

Speak­er 1:

Sec­tion 14 is called trans­port infor­ma­tion. This sec­tion pro­vides guid­ance on clas­si­fi­ca­tion infor­ma­tion for ship­ping and trans­port­ing of haz­ardous chem­i­cals by road, air, rail, or sea. The 15^th sec­tion is reg­u­la­to­ry infor­ma­tion. This sec­tion iden­ti­fies the safe­ty, health, and envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions spe­cif­ic for the prod­uct that is not indi­cat­ed any­where else on the SDS. And final­ly the 16^th sec­tion, oth­er infor­ma­tion. This sec­tion indi­cates when the SDS was pre­pared or when the last known revi­sion was made. The SDS may also state where the changes have been made to the pre­vi­ous ver­sion. You may wish to con­tact the sup­pli­er for an expla­na­tion of the changes.

Speak­er 1:

What in the world? Is that blood? Hey, Denis, can I get your help in here for a second?

Speak­er 2:

What hap­pened? Oh wow.

Speak­er 1:

I don’t know man. I came here to wash my hands and it looks like some­one might have cut them­selves or shoot, maybe some­one just spilled some­thing. I’m not sure. But I want­ed to get your opin­ion and see what we need­ed to do with it.

Speak­er 2:

Well, if it is not blood, we still need to treat it as blood.

Speak­er 1:

Okay. So should I just wipe it up then or no?

Speak­er 2:

No, don’t wipe it up because it could pos­si­bly be a blood­borne pathogen.

Speak­er 1:

What’s a blood­borne pathogen?

Speak­er 2:

Well, a blood­borne pathogen is a microor­gan­ism that can cause dis­ease from an affect­ed indi­vid­ual to anoth­er indi­vid­ual out of the blood or oth­er infec­tious materials.

Speak­er 1:

What kind of dis­eases are you talk­ing about?

Speak­er 2:

Oh, we’re talk­ing about hepati­tis C, hepati­tis B and HIV.

Speak­er 1:

Wow, this is a big deal then. So how does it go from being on the counter to cause me a dis­ease though?

Speak­er 2:

Well, you can have as sim­ple as a cut, or abra­sion, or you can ingest it by acci­dent and then there you go.

Speak­er 1:

Okay. So you men­tioned it can be on oth­er stuff, I think you said oth­er poten­tial­ly infec­tious mate­r­i­al, what kind of stuff are you talk­ing about?

Speak­er 2:

Well, we’re talk­ing about bod­i­ly flu­ids such as sweat, vom­it, through saliva.

Speak­er 1:

Wait a sec­ond, so you’re say­ing any of those things could have a blood­borne pathogen in it?

Speak­er 2:

Yes, pos­si­bly.

Speak­er 1:

Okay. So if I’m com­ing to do my nor­mal rou­tine though, and I’m going to clean the bath­room, does that mean I have to treat all of those things like blood?

Speak­er 2:

Neg­a­tive. You don’t always have to treat it all like blood only if you see blood with­in them.

Speak­er 1:

Okay. So it could be in those things but only if they have blood in them?

Speak­er 2:

Exact­ly.

Speak­er 1:

Gotcha. So what do we need to do to clean this up then?

Speak­er 2:

Well, let me go grab my blood­borne pathogen kit and then I’ll show you how do we do it.

Speak­er 1:

All right, let’s do it.

Speak­er 2:

All right.

Speak­er 1:

Tell you what man, it sounds like there’s a lot to this blood­borne pathogen thing.

Speak­er 2:

Most def­i­nite­ly.

Speak­er 1:

So if I’m one of your employ­ees and I want to find out some more infor­ma­tion about this stuff, where can I go to find that?

Speak­er 2:

Well, there’s two places you can go. So it’s OSHA 1910 Book of Stan­dards and then the sec­ond place is Budd Group’s expo­sure con­trol plan.

Speak­er 1:

Okay, that’s right. Yeah. So if any employ­ee has more ques­tions, they can con­tact their man­ag­er and they can either take them to the Book of Stan­dards, which out­lines what com­pa­nies need to have to be in com­pli­ance, or they can take them to the expo­sure con­trol plan that the Budd Group has, which is Budd Group spe­cif­ic. It just talks about how the Budd Group com­mu­ni­cates around a poten­tial exposure.

Speak­er 2:

Exact­ly.

Speak­er 1:

So let’s say one of your employ­ees does get exposed, what hap­pens? What should they do?

Speak­er 2:

They need to con­tact the man­ag­er imme­di­ate­ly first. And then from there, they’ll con­tact Med­cor and go from there and go through the process of what the stan­dard pro­ce­dures would be.

Speak­er 1:

Okay, so they’re fol­low­ing the nor­mal accident-

Speak­er 2:

Cor­rect.

Speak­er 1:

… pro­ce­dure. Okay. Any­thing else that you would rec­om­mend if they have been exposed?

Speak­er 2:

Yes. So imme­di­ate­ly after con­tact­ing your man­ag­er, you would go flood that area for 30 sec­onds with warm water and soap. And just make sure you vig­or­ous­ly, not tear­ing at your skin but vig­or­ous­ly, with a lit­tle bit of pres­sure on that area, clean­ing that surface.

Speak­er 1:

Gotcha. So we fol­lowed the acci­dent pro­ce­dure, like­ly they’re going to tell us we need to go to the hos­pi­tal and at the hos­pi­tal, a med­ical pro­fes­sion­al is going to walk us through get­ting test­ed and see­ing if we have been exposed to some­thing and then walk us through that process?

Speak­er 2:

Yes.

Speak­er 1:

It sounds like you know a lot about these dis­eases and blood­borne pathogens. Could you tell me a lit­tle bit more about hepati­tis B?

Speak­er 2:

Yeah. So hepati­tis B is very nasty. For one, it will inflame your liv­er, so it attacks your liv­er, cre­at­ing scar tis­sue over and over again. Cir­rho­sis of the liv­er, which caus­es liv­er fail­ure. The oth­er one could be genet­i­cal­ly passed from you to your child, your infant. And that is 90% of the case your child will con­tract if you have hepati­tis B.

Speak­er 1:

Okay so I have heard that that is what we’re most like­ly to be exposed to because so many peo­ple don’t even know that they have hepati­tis B. So is there any­thing that we can do to pre­vent our­selves from being exposed?

Speak­er 2:

Yes. So there’s hepati­tis B vac­ci­na­tion. So that’s a series of shots over three stages that lasts about three to six months.

Speak­er 1:

Okay. So it takes three to six months to get to the shots and then the actu­al vac­ci­na­tion is good for at least 10 years?

Speak­er 2:

Cor­rect.

Speak­er 1:

Okay. So what if I’m an employ­ee and I want to get the hepati­tis B vac­ci­na­tion, what do I need to do?

Speak­er 2:

Well, y’all are in luck here because at Budd Group we offer it for free for our employ­ees. So when you’re ini­tial­ly being hired, they give you this form to fill out whether you want to decline or accept the offer that we do give to our employ­ees for hepati­tis B vaccination.

Speak­er 1:

That’s right. And even if you decid­ed upfront that you don’t want it or maybe you had it and you don’t need it, but lat­er down the road you think, I do want to go get it, it’s still okay. Just con­tact your man­ag­er and they’ll walk you through the process of get­ting that vac­ci­na­tion started.

Speak­er 2:

Most def­i­nite­ly.

Speak­er 1:

Hope­ful­ly if you use the tips and tricks that we’ve giv­en you here today in this video, you’ll be able to go through your time at the Budd Group with­out any acci­dents or injuries. How­ev­er, some­times acci­dents do hap­pen and if they do, it’s impor­tant that you know how to report those. So the first thing that you need to do is let your super­vi­sor know if you’ve been hurt on the job. And then you and your super­vi­sor togeth­er will sit down and you’ll call our ²⁴⁄₇ nurse hot­line, and that nurse is going to walk you through what to do and the next steps it takes and whether or not you need to seek med­ical atten­tion for your injury. And that num­ber is very impor­tant. That num­ber is (844) 322‑4668. And that nurse hot­line is avail­able ²⁴⁄₇.

Speak­er 1:

Thanks again for watch­ing this video. We are so excit­ed to have you on your team and we are com­mit­ted to keep­ing you safe while you work for the Budd Group.

The Budd Group strives to be a God-hon­or­ing com­pa­ny of excel­lence safe­ly deliv­er­ing ser­vices in jan­i­to­r­i­al, main­te­nance, and land­scap­ing; offer­ing devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for their employ­ees; and con­tribut­ing to their community.

Inter­est­ed in work­ing for The Budd Group? We are hir­ing and offer benefits!

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Please use the links above for apply­ing to The Budd Group for any posi­tion through­out our com­pa­ny. How­ev­er, if you need to con­tact some­one regard­ing a spe­cif­ic ques­tion, please use the phone num­ber or email for the office near­est you from the list below.