Safety Stand-Down Day 2022: Celebrate Your Company’s Safe Practices
This week’s Industry Voices was written by Dr. Ryan Nolte, ISRI’s director of safety outreach.
On Wednesday, June 15, ISRI and its members will celebrate Safety Stand-Down Day 2022. Safety should be a company’s primary focus every day, but a safety stand-down day is a chance to show the importance of safety on a personal level and for business success and to initiate open dialogue on safety-specific actions. On Safety Stand-Down Day, companies can recognize employees who make the workplace safer and address day-to-day operational hazards.
Every Safety Stand-Down Day, we ask companies to take one hour on each shift to celebrate their workforce and health & safety programs. Some of the ways ISRI members have celebrated Safety Stand-Down Day include:
- Holding a training class;
- Conducting blind spot drills around mobile equipment;
- Reviewing near misses and other potentially serious injuries that may have happened in the work environment; and
- Holding open forums with employees to discuss ways to continuously improve the health & safety program (seek input and buy-in).
Safety Stand-Down Day is a chance to initiate conversations between upper management and front-line workers in an open forum that is more personal than memos, emails, etc. Companies can use this time to celebrate safety successes and promote best practices to employees. Recognition ceremonies are a great way to show how employees are critical to safety success, because ideas are only as good as what they produce, and workers can often come up with the best and most efficient ways to do a job. Their efforts deserve recognition and praise.
Recycling is essential to our country and to our communities. Safe and healthy workplaces are just as important to the recycling industry’s managers and workers. The recycling industry has made great strides in reducing accidents in the workplace over the years, but even one accident is too many. Celebrating people’s contributions to improving safety processes in the workplace brings together the practice and promotion of great ideas. Focus on the highest risks and ask front-line workers for suggestions to improve safety. No one knows more details about any job than the person performing it. A supervisor, manager, or environment, health and safety (EHS) professional may miss aspects that workers know well, and those details can be key to preventing an accident.
Let us know how you celebrate Safety Stand-Down Day. Send us photos and tell us about what you and your teammates did. Whatever you choose to do, we appreciate you working safely every day. For more information, contact ISRI’s safety team at mailto:isrisafety@isri.org.
