"Work comp costs reduced by almost 57%"

– Rick Clayton

Regional Safety Director

Excel Corporation

...and why does it work?

Overview

The purpose of SafeStart is to help people prevent the errors and mistakes they never wanted to make in the first place. It's not about rules and procedures or specific workplace hazards. It's about keeping those hazards in mind and in sight…

Figure 1

Knowing about a hazard won't do you much good if you're not thinking about it or you don't see it in the first place. SafeStart teaches people when they're most likely to make an injury causing error and what to do so they don't make that error and unexpectedly come into contact with some hazardous energy. However, instead of focusing on the hazardous energy, SafeStart focuses on the state of mind the person was in. It teaches people that there are four states: rushing, frustration, fatigue and complacency that cause four injury causing errors: eyes not on task, mind not on task, moving into or being in the line-of-fire or somehow losing your balance, traction or grip (see Figure 1).

Figure 2		Over 90% of all injuries at home, at work or on the road are caused by these state to error patterns.

Teaching people to recognize these state to error patterns that (greatly) increase the risk of injury is one of the key components in SafeStart training (see Figure 2).

Altogether, there are four critical error reduction techniques (see Figure 3).

1. Self-trigger on the state (or amount of hazardous energy) so you don't make a critical error.

2. Analyze close calls and small errors (to prevent agonizing over big ones)

3. Look at others for the patterns that increase the risk of injury

4. Work on habits

Figure 3

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