Sometimes short messages are best. That’s especially true when you’re running a weekly employee meeting and everyone mainly just wants to get to work.
Safety is a common topic for workplace meetings – lots of successful businesses have weekly “tailgate talks” or other safety discussions on a regular basis. And certain topics just bear repeating.
The National Safety Council has come up with a useful tool for delivering key safety messages. For a few years, they’ve been publishing the “5-Minute Safety Talk” series. With your package (you must be an NSC member to get them), you get a year’s worth of 5-minute messages, all fully scripted on laminated cards.
Lots of topics
Now, you may not want to stand in front of a group of people you know well and just read a script, but you can certainly use the printed message as a starting point for conveying the same basic information in your own words.
The 5-minute talks cover a wide range of important topics: choking and CPR, employee rights and responsibilities under OSHA, ergonomics, best practices to improve safety performance, pandemics, smoke-free policies, managing stress at work, work-life balance, the risks of working overtime and others.
If you visit the NSC Web site (www.nsc.org), you’ll find a sample “5-Minute Safety Talk” on employee wellness. It emphasizes proper nutrition and regular exercise as vital to a healthy lifestyle. It recommends getting 30 minutes of aerobic exercise a day, eating healthy snacks and meals, reducing or eliminating alcohol and quitting smoking.
Staying hydrated
A timely section of advice for this hot time of year deals with staying hydrated by drinking plenty of water. “Almost two-thirds of your body weight is water weight,” the talk says. “You should drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water each day to stay hydrated.
“Maintaining proper hydration can help you improve your energy, increase your mental and physical performance, remove toxins and waste products from your body, keep your skin healthy, help you lose weight, reduce headaches and dizziness and allow for proper digestion.
“Do not wait until you are thirsty to have a drink – you are already dehydrated if you feel thirsty. It is best to drink throughout the day instead of drinking a lot of water all at once. If you need to, set a timer to remind yourself to establish a habit of drinking water. Keep a bottle of water with you at all times. If it is hot outside or if you are exercising, you will need to increase your water intake to maintain hydration.”
A worthy concept
The 5-minute talk goes on to describe the virtues of exercise and how to work toward the goal of taking “10,000 steps per day.” It lists three Web sites with good wellness information:
www.mypyramid.gov – The U.S. Department of Agriculture Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, with information on nutrition labels, healthy portions and good food choices.
www.cdc.gov – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with advice on nutrition, bone health, stroke prevention, skin cancer prevention and more.
www.mayoclinic.com – The Mayo Clinic, with various tools for healthier living.
If you don’t want to subscribe to a service like “5-Minute Safety Talks,” perhaps you can devise something similar on your own. Some health and safety messages can’t be talked about often enough. And if you keep stressing them, then perhaps in time they’ll take hold with some people. And you’ll have a safer, healthier and more productive team.
