Don’t Take This Personally, Take This Very Personally
My decision to work as a safety meeting speaker didn’t start because I was reading a book on safety one day. My role as a safety meeting speaker started many years ago when one of my buddies on the job was badly injured. In fact, he could have lost his life. My first jobs weren’t in a stuffy office but in manufacturing, transportation and construction.
Safety Meeting Speaker
As a safety meeting speaker, it’s my job to help keep you safe. My goal as a safety speaker isn’t to lecture or do a song and a dance, but to make sure you get home to your loved ones.
For me, safety is personal, and it should be for you too. I say to my audiences “Don’t take safety personally, take it very personally.” When I was on the job, my buddies didn’t always like it when I told them to put on their safety glasses, or get help lifting or to clean up a spill. But you know what? At the end of the day, they thanked me because I had their backs.
When I speak to audiences, I ask them to imagine a group picture of everybody they know from the job. These are the people you see almost every day; guys you work with, or have lunch with, maybe you’re on a softball team together or you socialize with their friends and families.
Now imagine the same picture with one of those guys missing. Maybe it was your best friend, or a guy who was getting ready to retire or someone who was active in the community who everyone liked.
Why is he or she missing from the picture? Because they should have been wearing a safety harness – and didn’t; because they had too many beers before driving home; because they suffered burns – or whatever.
What could have prevented it from happening? You.
If You Could
That co-worker in the picture: if someone could have told your buddy to wear a safety harness so he wouldn’t have broken his back, would you have wanted them to say something? If someone could have taken the keys away from the co-worker who was drunk at the retirement party, would you have wanted them to do something? If someone had stepped in and shouted at that new employee to not mess around with the steam valve on the mixing kettles, would you have wanted them to yell at her? To all of those questions, “Of course!”
It’s not a matter of “If you could,” it must be a matter of “Yes, you must!”
Unless we take safety personally, we are all to blame when a co-worker suffers an injury or worse. Safety is a personal business.
As a safety speaker, I know that after an accident it is way too late to be pointing fingers. Who is responsible for safety at the workplace in a company ask Workplace Safety Speaker? Everyone, from the CEO on down. Safety is personal, because organizations are about people.
Bottom line, safety demands that we care about each other. Do you care enough to take it personally?
Book Mike Hourigan, Safety Meeting Speaker, for your next virtual or in-person presentation. Contact Mike today at (704) 875-3030 or fill out the form below.
