Estimated Read Time: 10 minutes
Every workplace has its own set of safety issues, and the ones that bite you are usually the ones nobody flagged. Understanding the top safety issues in workplace environments not only helps prevent accidents but also fosters a culture of care and compliance. Below, I break down real-world safety challenges and the lessons learned from the worst safety incidents.
From balancing employee care with company liability to tackling dangerous practices like locked exit doors and bypassing safety interlocks, these examples offer valuable insights. By addressing root causes with data-driven strategies, organizations can improve safety outcomes and protect their workforce effectively.
Whether you’re a seasoned safety professional or new to workplace safety management, these lessons provide practical approaches to overcome common hazards and challenges.

Key Takeaways
- Address root causes, not just symptoms: Understanding the underlying issues leads to sustainable safety improvements.
- Use data to influence change: Behavioral studies and cost analyses help persuade management beyond simply citing regulations.
- Understand business motivations: Balancing safety and operational concerns builds better solutions.
- Involve employees in decision-making: Transparency and collaboration minimize backlash and improve compliance.
- Think long-term: Sustainable safety requires systemic changes, including hiring, training, and communication.
Balancing Employee Care and Company Liability: The Eternal Safety Management Challenge
The most difficult scenario I’ve faced in safety management isn’t a specific hazard or incident – it’s the constant struggle to balance employee care with company liability protection. This challenge appears in many forms:
- When an insurance company delays approving necessary surgery for an injured worker
- When company leadership attempts to hide negligence that contributed to an accident
- When blame gets shifted to avoid recording incidents on company logs
For new safety professionals, this ethical tightrope can be particularly challenging. You want to advocate for injured workers while still fulfilling your duty to protect the organization. Developing a comprehensive incident response procedure can help you navigate these difficult situations with both empathy and professionalism.
Now, let’s examine five of the most serious safety issues I’ve encountered and the strategies we used to overcome them.
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Top 5 Workplace Safety Issues and the Fix
Year after year, OSHA’s most-cited standards and BLS injury data point to the same handful of issues. Here are five real ones and how they got solved.
| Safety issue | The risk | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| Chain-and-lock exit doors | Trapped employees in a fire or emergency | Panic hardware and audited, unlocked egress |
| Disgruntled employees calling regulators | Surprise inspections and citations | Fix the root complaint; build trust before it escalates |
| Bypassing interlocks with magnets | Amputations and severe machine injuries | Remove the magnets; enforce lockout/tagout |
| Hiring drivers with risky records | Crashes and massive liability | Screen driving records; set a clear fleet policy |
| Overworking 18-20 hour shifts | Fatigue-driven errors and injuries | Cap hours; build fatigue management into scheduling |
Top 5 Common Safety Hazards & How We Solved Them
1. Chain-and-Lock Exit Doors
The Issue: One company I worked with literally chained and locked exit doors to prevent employee theft of high-value products.
Why It Happened: Management was desperate to stop theft of products worth approximately $1,000 per box. Their solution? Restrict exits to just two doors – the main entrance and a back door near the operations manager’s office.
Real-Life Consequences: This practice created a deadly fire hazard reminiscent of the 1991 chicken plant tragedy where dozens of workers died because they couldn’t escape through locked exit doors.
Lesson & Strategy:
- First, I educated management about potential fines and legal consequences from fire code violations
- More importantly, we implemented transparent safety culture improvement by replacing chains with alarm systems and cameras as deterrents
- We addressed the root cause by discussing why employee theft occurs and how creating a positive work environment reduces theft risk
- When theft did occur, we made it public knowledge with visible consequences (police involvement, termination) rather than hiding it
This approach tackled both the immediate safety hazard and the underlying employee engagement issues. When workers feel valued and respected, they’re less likely to risk their jobs by stealing.
2. Disgruntled Employees Calling Regulators
The Issue: At one company, a seemingly minor change to the safety bonus structure triggered a wave of retaliatory actions.
Why It Happened: Management decided to eliminate a $500 monthly safety bonus and instead incorporate that amount into regular wages. Though employees didn’t lose any money, they perceived it as a significant loss.
Real-Life Consequences: Angry employees bombarded regulatory agencies with complaints – OSHA, DOT, EPA, Homeland Security, police, fire department – creating years of investigations and wasted resources, even though no violations were found.
Lesson & Strategy:
- Always approach changes with transparency and advance communication
- Involve employees in the decision-making process through collaboration
- Understand the psychological impact of perceived losses, even when the financial impact is neutral
- Replace cash incentives with short-term, award-based recognition programs to improve workplace safety without creating entitlements
Research shows that cash-based safety incentives often backfire when modified or removed. Award-based recognition focused on specific behaviors produces better long-term results without the negative consequences.
3. Bypassing Safety Interlocks with Magnets
The Issue: Management at one facility actually instructed workers to bypass machine safety interlocks using magnets so they could reach into running equipment.
Why It Happened: The production manager believed shutting down machines to change parts would cause excessive downtime because the equipment operated at high temperatures and required time to reheat.
Real-Life Consequences: Two employees at this location had already lost fingers due to this dangerous practice, yet it continued as standard procedure.
Lesson & Strategy:
- Rather than simply citing regulations, I conducted time-and-motion studies to disprove the manager’s assumption about productivity loss
- We demonstrated that properly shutting down equipment and following lockout/tagout procedures only added seconds to the process, not the assumed 15 minutes
- We implemented engineering controls and proper procedures while showing how workers could perform other necessary tasks during brief equipment transitions
- We surveyed employees about how this requirement affected their perception of management, revealing a significant morale problem
By addressing the manager’s actual concern (productivity) with data rather than just citing rules, we created lasting change. The data-driven approach allowed us to implement proper procedures while maintaining efficiency.
4. Hiring Drivers with Past DUIs or Careless Driving
The Issue: Faced with driver shortages, a transportation company began hiring drivers with recent DUIs or careless driving violations on their records.
Why It Happened: Desperation to fill positions led to lowered hiring standards, with management viewing it as a necessary compromise during a talent shortage.
Real-Life Consequences: Beyond the obvious liability concerns, these drivers consistently demonstrated lower productivity, more incidents, and poorer overall performance.
Lesson & Strategy:
- I developed a data-driven hiring scorecard that objectively evaluated applicants based on driving records, work history, and reference checks
- We tracked performance metrics of drivers with clean records versus those with violations to demonstrate the business impact (not just safety concerns)
- We educated hiring managers on the true cost of “quick hires” versus waiting for qualified candidates
- We implemented a systematic scoring system that allowed the best candidates to rise to the top of the applicant pool
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has documented that past driving behaviors are the strongest predictor of future performance. Our data-driven approach confirmed this while providing a practical solution.
5. Overworking Employees 18–20-Hour Shifts
The Issue: During seasonal peaks, employees at multiple facilities were working 18-20 hour shifts or working, leaving for 5 hours, then returning for another full shift.
Why It Happened: Management viewed the seasonal nature of these demands as temporary and therefore not worth hiring additional staff.
Real-Life Consequences: Severe injuries increased dramatically during these periods, including a finger amputation and multiple serious lacerations, while quality and productivity plummeted.
Lesson & Strategy:
- I compared the cost of overtime, reduced productivity, quality issues, and injuries to the cost of temporary staffing
- We implemented cross-training programs so employees from less busy departments could support high-demand areas
- We developed relationships with temporary staffing agencies specifically for these predictable peak periods
- We created staggered hiring and training schedules that brought new workers on board before peak season hit
Research from the National Safety Council shows that working more than 12 hours significantly increases injury risk, while productivity declines dramatically after 8-10 hours. By presenting this data alongside the business impacts, we convinced management to change their approach.
Podcast: Top 10 Safety Issues, Part 1
[00:00:00] What are the worst safety issues you have seen? Now we all have our horror stories and all of us have engaged at one point or another in one upmanship. You know where my experience is worse than yours? Way till you hear about this. But recently this question was posed to me and I believe. That sharing my lessons learned about my worst safety issues would help you more than just sharing the horror stories.
So let's get into it.
[00:01:00] Hello? Hello? Hello. My safety friends. I know it has been a while, but I believe that you will definitely forgive me.
So let me catch you up on what has been happening in the Safety Geek household for the last month or so, and I told you 2025 has just been a brutal year for me. [00:02:00] When I started podcasting again, I told you how I was sick for, most of the spring, right? Well, what has happened this summer is that I have had two deaths in my family, and I know this is sad, but ,
they weren't unexpected. So the first one was my grandmother. She passed away at the beginning of August and my grandmother was 107 years old when she passed away. And we were not very close. When I was a teenager, she. Extremely nasty to me. So I've not really talked to her since I was 16, but other people in the family were close to her.
So, that brings things up. But what's interesting about my grandmother is that she died when she was 107 and she didn't have anything wrong with her. Like she wasn't even on medication. She died just of old age, I guess is what they're determining her cause of death. But she [00:03:00] wasn't a healthy person because she was very much overweight, but like she spent her entire life always running to the doctor for.
Everything and like literally faking ailments to get attention. And in fact, that's what ended her up in the nursing home in the end, up until she was 105, she was living on her own. She would have a home health aide, but she was living on her own.
But she would fake things to get my brother's attention 'cause she lived near my brother, not near me. And one time when she was faking a fall, she actually fell and broke her hip and at 105 years old had a hip replacement. And from that point forward, she never got out of the bed of the nursing home.
And the reason why I share this is that a couple of weeks ago, at the end of August, my mother passed away and my mother was the complete opposite of my grandmother. She [00:04:00] refused to listen to doctors. She would go to the doctor when they would like, recommend, they'd be like, Hey, we wanna see you in six months, or You need to make an appointment for 30 days, or You need to go see this doctor or go see that doctor.
She would do that, but then she would lie to the doctors. She wouldn't take her medications or she would cut them in half and she would never do what she was told. She only, like haphazardly did her physical therapy, and my mother was very, very sick 10 years ago. She had a stroke that should have killed her, and she's been disabled.
Since then, and over the last, I'd say five years, her health has just deteriorated. She had kidney disease and lost a kidney. She's had heart issues. She's had everything. And ultimately why she passed away was there were so many clots in her legs. They needed to amputate them and she refused. She refused to have her legs amputated and she passed away within days.
It's the contrast between the two, right? [00:05:00] Like my mom did live to life expectancy. She was 80 years old when she passed away, and my grandmother was 107 and they passed away within a month of each other. And here you had my grandmother who was like running to the doctor and my mother who just refused to listen to the doctors.
And my lesson learned, I guess, for you on this, is that listen to your doctors. Like even though my grandmother was like faking things and running to the doctor all the time. She did what the doctor said and she lived to be 107 and my mother has had bad health her entire life and she just refused to do what the doctors told her to do.
So go for your regular checkups. If your doctor tells you to take meds, you take the meds, they tell you to exercise more or lose weight, do it. I mean, I don't know what they'll tell you, but like that is my lesson learned on that. But yes, my family has lost two matriarchs. , Within a month of each other.
And it's just been [00:06:00] difficult. It's been interesting. The psychological impact even on myself because I was not close to my grandmother. My mother and I had a very strange relationship and. Still having to deal with everything. 'cause it's not just me, right? It's my brother and my sister and their kids.
And my kids and everybody dealing with it. And then having to deal with the finance end of it and the belongings and all of that stuff. So it was surprising to me how much of my brain power was taken over by this, over the last two weeks, but that is why I have not been podcasting.
It's 'cause there's just been a lot of things going on in the safety geek household and I don't know what else 2025 can throw at me, but I'm sure it will before the end of the year. But we will handle it as it goes because this is life. And life would be boring if we didn't have challenges to face and problems to solve. So I always try to look at things as things are happening for me. So [00:07:00] why is this happening for me and what am I gonna get out of it? And I would say, out of this, my biggest lesson is go to the freaking doctor and listen to what they say.
Alrighty. So let's move on to today's topic. If you are not aware, over the past four or five months, I have been running a weekly masterclass and it fills up almost every week. It's actually incredible 'cause my system has a limit as to how many people can attend and registration wise, we fill up every single week, but.
Sometimes people don't show up. I don't know why people register for things and then don't show up. I do find that odd, but we do offer the replay, so I understand that people's lives are busy and we have the replay. But anyway, when I'm doing this. Masterclass. The way that the system works, there's such a delay that when questions come up, I cannot answer them in real [00:08:00] time.
My admin is in the chat and she is answering the questions, but sometimes questions come up that she can't answer or are not necessarily related to the topic that we're talking about, and that's what happened recently. So we opened it up for q and a and somebody had two questions. That I felt were better answered here on the podcast and they were really good.
And the first one was, what are the top 10 safety issues that I've dealt with? And the second one is, what's the worst case scenario that I've ever dealt with? And I could easily just name off probably 10 or 20 different horror stories. Like I said, we all have our horror stories, especially if you've been at this for a while and I've been doing this, like I did field safety, like I was on the ground, boots on the ground safety for over 15 years, and I've been training safety managers for over 10 years.
Between those two areas. Like I've heard tons of horror stories [00:09:00] and I've experienced a lot of 'em, but I don't think that would do anybody any good. And in fact, if I just told you on my worst case scenarios, you might think like, how did you even let that happen? You must not be very good at your job.
But honestly, no. What I found I was listing these out is a lot of them have to do a new acquisitions, but at the same time I try to look at it as lessons learned. So that's how I wanna approach this, is I want to share, my worst case. Issues that come to mind, but then I'll also share the lessons learned or how I handled those situations or how I remedied those situations so that way if you are faced with the same issue, you are better prepared now.
We are going to break this episode up into two episodes because otherwise I will probably be here for an hour. 'cause you know how I love to talk about safety, so we'll break this up. I'll talk about my worst case [00:10:00] scenario, and then five of my top 10, and then the next episode we'll do the other five, top 10 as well.
So hopefully you find this interesting.
All right, let's get started with the easier question is what is the worst case scenario that I have dealt with? And I love the terminology scenario because that doesn't mean it's necessarily an issue.
It wasn't like a safety hazard or anything like that, but I've always felt in safety management that the worst thing about our jobs and the worst thing that we have to deal with is balancing company liability over care for the employee, meaning that I have such strong empathy. For an employee [00:11:00] situation and what they're going through, but I have a strong responsibility to make sure that the company pays as little as possible for every injury, and I struggle with that.
And I have had situations where I had an employee have a legitimate injury, and the insurance company was non-responsive. The guy needed surgery and the insurance company was. Waiting and waiting and waiting to the point that I wanted to tell the employee to hire an attorney like it was that bad that I've always been against hiring attorneys for workplace injuries because I feel like if you just work with the insurance company and you're fair, you get to keep your job, you get to, stay working through light duty and your care is taken care of. And then at the end of it, you're still even gonna get a settlement based on your disability rating, right?
So I've always been against hiring [00:12:00] attorneys unless it is something severe. But in this case it was just a minor shoulder injury and they were just not doing the right thing. And so I've had that issue. I've also had the company hiding negligence. Like the reason the accident happened was obviously company negligence and I was told to keep my mouth shut on that and not to tell anybody that I found that out and see if the insurance company or the attorneys find it out.
The one I'm thinking of directly was we had a driver get into an accident, and at the accident scene, my driver trainer found that the windshield was so dirty that the driver could not see through it, and his supervisor made that driver drive to go get his drug screen related to that accident. Now, the accident was not his fault.
The first accident wasn't. It was not his fault. The [00:13:00] second accident he got into, he ended up rear-ending somebody. They never cleaned the windshield. He couldn't see 'em. But I was told to keep my mouth shut about that, you know, and that's hard. And then the other thing I've had to deal with is where they shift blame.
So the one that comes to mind is I had an employee get her hand stuck in a grinding machine. And at the time we were actually working with the manufacturer of the grinding machine to come up with an acceptable way to guard it better.
And in that process, she gets pulled into the machine. Now, luckily she just broke her hand, but the previous employee, not mine, but at another location, had had his hand ripped off. But in this particular case, this employee was a temp employee technically, but two hours earlier, she filled out all paperwork to become our employee.
Like before she started her shift, she had filled out paperwork to be our employee. Okay. But because we didn't turn the paperwork in, she was technically a temp [00:14:00] agency employee, so that entire accident got wiped off of our books. So that's what I think is our worst case scenario, and it's something I constantly struggle with in safety management, is always balancing that company liability over care for the employee.
And I'm not gonna get into lessons learned on all these, but it's just something I always think about in my mind. When you enroll in Safety Management Academy, I give you an option to get my incident response procedures and the incident response procedures lay out my, I think it's eight steps, maybe 15 steps on responding to incidents that I've developed over the years that helped me with this exact issue because I believe that we need to show care for the employee, but I also understand it is.
Our responsibility to protect the company's liability. So my procedures actually do that in most [00:15:00] situations. So obviously some of these it didn't. It didn't work. Alrighty. So that's my worst case scenario. Let's get onto my top 10. Now, this is in no particular order. I just sat here after that session when that question was asked and started writing down things that I could think of that.
Were like my top 10 safety issues, and I didn't want this to be like. Oh, this guard was missing and somebody lost a finger. I wanted it to be like true safety issues that we have to deal with and that we have to come up with solutions for. And like I said, I'll do five today because I can see I'm already several minutes into this episode.
And then we'll do five more next week. Alrighty. So my first one is probably gonna horrify you, but this company I work for, used to put chains and locks on the exit doors.
I am talking like serious big, heavy duty chains [00:16:00] and big heavy duty locks that only. The manager of the building had keys for, he was literally locking his employees in and only allowing them to enter and exit from two doors. One being the front main door and one being the back main door where the operations manager's office was.
But all the other exits had chains and locks, and this reminded me of that chicken plant fire. I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but in 1991, there was a chicken plant fire where the chains and locks were on the doors, and I believe like 25 to 45 people were killed or injured in that fire because they literally found them crushed up against the exit door.
Burnt, right? Because they couldn't exit the building. So my lesson learned on this was first, like, why was he doing it? And it was really over fear of employee theft. [00:17:00] They had a very high dollar product where like one box had the street value of a thousand dollars. And they had a theft problem.
It wasn't like they didn't have this theft problem, this was how they were trying to solve it. So the way that I got them to stop doing the chains on the doors was one, obviously telling them the fact that if the fire department found out about this, she would be fined. So that is definitely one issue.
Strangely enough, this one plant had a problem with the fire department down the road. Not with this problem 'cause I fixed it, but. Down the road, their fire alarm system or their sprinkler system, I think it was broke. And they were like, they played cheap and said that they couldn't afford to fix it right now.
Somebody reported it to the fire department. No, it was not me. And fire department comes to inspect it and finds it's not working. So what did they do? They sat their truck in the parking lot and find them $7,000 a day until they fixed it they hid that from the corporate [00:18:00] office, but then when the bill came in for like a hundred thousand dollars or something like that they definitely got in trouble.
But anyway, the way that I solved the chains on the door problem was one, bringing up the fact about the fire department. But two, I really wanted to calm their fears as well about theft. So we had discussions about why employee theft happens and what other controls we could use, which I mean is easily those doors that have alarms on it.
And then even cameras, like that's deterrence. It's not gonna stop theft because if somebody really wanted to steal something, they're gonna steal it regardless, because even with the chains and the locks on the doors, they were still stealing things. So then we got into like why they are stealing it, right?
Their why are they putting their job at risk for this thousand dollars box of product? So what I got them to realize is that if you treat your employees well, if [00:19:00] you make the work environment pleasant, if they enjoy who they work with and who they work for, then they are not going to put that job at risk by stealing.
One box of product. And then when, whenever we did catch anybody stealing, we made a huge deal out of it. The police were called, charges were pressed, it was made a show of it. So what was happening before that was like, they were calling the police and dealing with it, but they kept it really quiet.
'cause they were like I don't wanna tell, I don't want other employees to know that there's a possibility of theft. I don't wanna put the idea in their head. But instead, we did not waste a good firing. So if someone is stealing product and they got very, very
creative in how they were stealing the products, when we did catch it, we actually took the hard stance on it. And then on the flip side, we worked to prevent it. By putting in deterrence, [00:20:00] putting in mechanical deterrence, but by making the job one that they wanted to keep, that they wouldn't wanna put at risk.
And that is valuing your employees. There's so much that comes out of treating your employees right, that help the business out. Alright, so the second one, the second safety issue that I've faced is disgruntled employees. So when employees feel bad about the organization, now, obviously I just talked about theft.
They could obviously do that, but what I've had happen with disgruntled employees is they literally call every regulatory agency they can think of. So I've had disgruntled employees call osha, DOT, Homeland Security, EPA, the police, the fire department. I literally, they get mad at you for one thing and they call everybody.
And the reason why this happened, the case I'm thinking about is we actually took [00:21:00] away the safety bonus. So these employees were getting a $500 a month safety bonus for not getting into an accident and for attending the monthly safety meeting. And our thought process was like, this is hard to track, and everybody's getting it anyway.
Like we would much rather build a safety culture instead of. Paying out for you, doing your job, like them driving safely and not getting into accidents and intending safety training. That's their job. They're required to do that. So if that's their job, they're required to do it, let's take this $500 and just add it to their pay.
And that's what we did. They actually never lost the $500, but instead it went into wages as opposed to this once a month bonus that they got. And oh my gosh, they hated it so much even though they didn't lose anything. So my lesson learned on this was just about the perceived loss that people [00:22:00] believe there's a loss when I didn't believe there was a loss.
But in their mind. They were probably taking that $500 as extra money. Maybe they were doing something with it on the side for their own personal benefit or whatever, and now we took it and just put it into their wages so they could have just taken $500 outta their wages and did whatever. But that's just not the way people work.
There's not financial literacy out there. So it was just this misconception about. Them being upset, like we were trying not to get them upset by giving them the money, but they were still upset by it. So the lesson learned on this was one was being very transparent, and this is why I believe all safety programs need to be based on transparency and just being very open about what you're doing, why you're doing it, how you're doing it, and addressing any questions ahead of time.
And this is why [00:23:00] collaboration is so important because you're there in. You know what they perceive as the ivory tower making these decisions that are affecting their lives. If we understood when we were taking away that $500, if we understood their perceived loss, we could have helped them come up with a way to still maintain that, that bonus.
We could have. Come up with different savings accounts that automatically the money went into that and every month they could just draw from that. We could have given them a little financial literacy before it happened. We could have stopped the complaints ahead of time, but the way that the safety director at the time did it, it was not me.
The way the safety director at the time did it was just. They sent out a memo that went to their paycheck and said, effective like next month, we're no longer giving safety bonuses. Your wages will increase by [00:24:00] this much every week to compensate for it. And that was it. It took us years, years to get over that mistake.
Because we lost all trust from the employees and they just saw us as taking something from them. But disgruntled employees, they can have a true impact on your business because like I said, they called everybody for I, I spent two years going through like OSHA complaints and Homeland Security.
Inquisitions, I guess you could say. It was crazy what they did afterwards and it was only a handful of employees that took it upon themselves to call regulatory bodies and nothing came of it. We didn't get any fines, we weren't doing anything wrong. All of that, it was just time wasted.
Working on these issues that could have been solved before the problem ever happened, [00:25:00] and this is why I am a hundred percent against safety incentives and incentives being cash. I believe that incentives should be short term to address a problem, and they should be award based, not cash based. Because if you're giving somebody cash on a regular basis, it's really hard for you to take it away.
And then I worked for a second company that they were doing the same exact thing. They were giving a $300 bonus for the same exact thing. And I was like, I was stuck. 'cause I was like, I'm not taking this away. It took me, I think I was there for two or three years before we finally made the move and removed it.
And we removed it the right way. And luckily at that location there's only 25 drivers compared to 500 drivers. So you don't get as much backlash when it's just a handful 'cause you have a better connection with everybody. So that is issue number two. Safety issue number three was bypassing safety, interlinks with magnets at the [00:26:00] direction of the management team.
This was a requirement by the management team to. Reach into a machine while it was running by bypassing the interlocks with magnets. And this was my very first brush up. I literally, within my first six weeks of working at this company, this was my issue. And I was like, no, we're not doing this.
Absolutely not. And in fact, there were two employees at that location that were missing fingers because of it, and they still work there. They still continue to work there. Under this regime, this manager who constantly put their body parts at risk. So how I addressed this because it was a very tricky situation that this manager had so much power and I was brand new.
I first addressed the reason why, like, why are you requiring this? Why are you doing this? Because. Obviously there were consequences. All it took was one of those employees to [00:27:00] call osha, and there would've been fines out the wazoo. But I was like, there's gotta be a reason why you don't want the machine stopped.
And his belief at the time was that it slowed everything down because the machine ran on heat. So if you shut it down to lock it out, to change what they had to change inside of it, the machine would cool down and it would take 15 minutes for it to heat back up. And be able to run, because in the mornings it took 15 minutes for the machine to heat up because in the mornings it was a cold machine, but they had to change the dyes several times a day.
And in changing those dyes, you shut the machine down. Yes, it does start to cool down, but not very much. So what I did was I actually timed it. I was like, let's time your way and let's time my way and see what the difference is. And it was literally less than a minute. [00:28:00] And now his argument was, well they do this, 20 times a day or 30 times a day.
So I am saving some time. And I'm not gonna argue with you on that, but what's our employee perception of you forcing them to do this? So then we did employee perception surveys. If you already guessed it, this was the place that had the chains and locks on the doors as well. So we had already had the employee morale issue as well.
So all of those things finally started to shift his thinking that it really wasn't that big of a deal because what I said was like, as they're waiting for the machine to heat up, they're able to clean up their work area, they're able to do other tasks. That they would normally have to do anyway, but this is making their work more efficient.
And then I kept an eye on it and we would time it multiple times and we would always are we staying within our timeframe? And we were. So it's really just using different tools to convince people. So instead of just using force like, Hey, OSHA finds whatever. [00:29:00] I understood his thinking and then I was like, how can I change his thinking?
How can I show him that his thinking is incorrect in a way that he would believe it? All right. Number four, hiring drivers. With past DUIs or careless driving. Now I'm not talking like, hey, they had a DUI 15 years ago. I'm saying they had a, they just got their license reinstated from their DUI or it has, they had a DUI three or four years ago, or they had multiple DUIs.
That shows a problem. And here's my thing against. Hiring people with passed ui. So first off, there's a liability issue. They get into an accident and that person sues us. All of this is gonna come up and the liability of that accident is gonna double or triple. But more importantly, when you are hiring in a desperate situation and you're hiring poor performers you also get lower [00:30:00] productivity.
Like you're not hiring the best person. So you're paying for it in other ways.
And the reason why this company was hiring people with DUIs or careless driving, which just to let you know, if you ever see careless driving on an MVR or motor vehicle record. It is likely A DUI that has been pled down to careless driving. 'cause very rarely do cops write tickets for careless driving.
Careless driving is a very serious offense, so if you see that on somebody's NM VR, if they don't have an accident attached to it, it's likely because of a DUI. Likely, I'm not saying always, but likely. And the reason why they were hiring these people was because they were desperate.
As you guys know, there is a driver shortage. There's been a driver shortage for CDL drivers for years. I totally blame the trucking industry for that. I think that they make the jobs. [00:31:00] Look bad instead of making them look desirable. 'cause CDL drivers make really good money. I think that they need to do a better job of making that role look better.
But there's a driver shortage and there has been, and. They were desperate to hire drivers. They were literally hiring anybody. But what the results of that being was that yes they were opening up themselves to liability. But what I was able to show is that those drivers actually gave us lower productivity, and they were poor performers.
So the way I did that was I trended the accidents as well as I took the other data that. That transportation department had based on efficiencies and loads and number of boxes delivered and all of that. And then I compared who were our best drivers to, who are our worst drivers on efficiency?
And then I looked at [00:32:00] what their score was when we hired them, and what you found is that the people with the lower score in our scoring system were our worst performers. So that kind of got them to shift and be like, you're better off waiting and looking and doing other things to hire high performers than just settling for people that have a history of.
Poor driving or accidents or anything like that. The scoring system I came up with, looked at everything. It scored things on their application.
It scored things. On their previous employer checks because when you're hiring CDL drivers, you have to check with their previous employers and all of those things. So it's like accident data, MVR, data arrest records, anything that was on their application, like how long they stated their previous employer compared to, in the past. So we came up with a scoring system so that way our best applicants can rise to the [00:33:00] top. And that way it gave the hiring managers something that like, okay, these are the ones that are scoring high from the safety department. We should consider them first. So I didn't necessarily say you can't hire people with careless driving or DUIs.
But I gave them the data to make them shift their thinking. Then maybe they would be better off just looking for other candidates. Alright, so number five, safety issue. And the last one we're gonna cover today, 'cause I can already see we're going pretty long on this is working employees 18 to 20 hour shifts.
And I actually found this happening at two different locations, and both times it was because of seasonality, because there were seasons where their production was a lot busier, so they would have to ramp up production, but they would not ramp up the hiring because in their mind, this was only for one month, so it wasn't worth.
Hiring people and training [00:34:00] them that they would just give the overtime to their current employees. And because it was seasonal, those employees saw it as a bonus. So I wanna make this very, very clear. The employees were not complaining about this. The employees were perfectly happy to be working 18 to 20 hours or doing turnarounds of five hours.
Leave the facility, and be back five hours later. They were perfectly fine with that. They were extremely hard workers, but I was not fine with this. And the way that I brought this to everybody's attention was at the time, what was it called? Foxcom, I think in China, where employees were literally committing suicide for being overworked and complaining about the long working hours.
And they were working 16 hour shifts. And I said, you're working our employees more. And I obviously had an increase in injuries when this happened [00:35:00] and some of them were serious. One was a finger amputation. Others were just severe lacerations or other injuries. So I definitely had that as well. So what I proposed to them, because I found that this just kept happening, was better planning 'cause that was the reason for it to happen, which is poor planning and they did not want to spend the money.
So I recommended cross training because what would happen is they would have employees in one area that were working really hard. And I was like, but if you cross train people, you can pull employees from other areas to kind of cover those extra hours. And that way you're not giving somebody. 10 hours overtime, maybe you're giving them five.
The other thing was to ramp up hiring two to three months prior. And there they were against that at first because they were comparing the cost of hiring com. But I compared it to the cost of overtime, plus the cost of [00:36:00] accidents. Plus the cost of productivity, because once somebody works past, honestly, what studies have shown is after six hours, productivity starts to drop.
So could you imagine after 10 hours? I mean, productivity shrinks so much. So if you just brought in fresh employees, you wouldn't have to work 20 hour shifts. You might just have to work, 16 hour shifts. So it was saving them money that way because they weren't having to work as many hours to get the same amount of production.
So when I was comparing it, I was not just talking about safety, I was talking about the cost of their overtime and the cost of their productivity as well as the cost of their quality, because quality started to dip as well. And this was seasonal. So this means these are people that will. They may come back next year for this product next year.
So we wanna make sure we're always giving them a high quality product and you can just [00:37:00] ramp up hiring through a temp agency. We see it all the time at Christmas time where companies hire just for two or three months. And I was like, we could do this even though it's like weird times of the year.
I actually had an organization that I was the regional safety manager for that the first week of every month. Their orders doubled or tripled. So for the first week of every month, they had to ramp up, and then the rest of the month it was dead. So we had to come up with a way to make sure that the people they were using that first week were either in low safety sensitive jobs.
If you're just bringing people in from a temp agency for a week, or come up with a way of cross training or pulling from other corporate locations that don't have that right. Hey, do you wanna come work here for a week every month? And it's all within the same organization. Yeah, and it gives them maybe [00:38:00] overtime or something like that.
So there are ways that you can work around it. You first have to identify the problem, which we identified as them overworking the employees. Then you just have to get them to realize the cost of what they're doing. 'cause they don't see, it's not like my management team looked at it and said, oh, this is okay.
They just didn't see any other options. So sometimes you just have to think outside the box. Alrighty, my safety friends, those are my first five. I don't wanna say top five, but my first five because those are in no particular order. Next week we'll talk about my other five. And in the meantime, if you have any questions like this or any others that you think would be really good for a podcast.
Lemme know. I would love to hear from you. Just email us at support@thesafetygeek.com and put podcast topic in the subject so that way it's really [00:39:00] highlighted for us. And we may add it to our list because I love just casually talking about different safety issues. And hopefully you're getting something out of this.
And if you've not heard about the weekly webinar or masterclass that I'm doing or you have not attended yet, you can. Get in on the next one because like I said, this is filling up every week. So until it stops filling up, we're gonna keep doing it. Go to the safety geek.com/s MIS, stands for Safety Management Influencer System, SMIS, and that will show you when the next session is going to be.
Alrighty, I look forward to chatting with you next week. You have an amazing one. Bye for now.
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Now It’s Your Turn
Now that you’ve learned about some of the critical workplace safety issues and how to address them effectively, it’s time to take action. Here are some steps you can apply immediately:
- Assess your workplace: Identify if any conditions like locked doors, unsafe interlock practices, or extended shifts exist in your current environment.
- Engage leadership: Present data and real-world examples to demonstrate the business case for safety improvements.
- Collaborate with employees: Communicate transparently about changes and involve them in decision-making to foster trust.
- Develop comprehensive safety programs: Including incident response procedures, training, and continuous monitoring.
- Review hiring practices: Implement data-driven scorecards to ensure you select candidates who meet safety and performance standards.
Implementing these actionable steps will create a safer, more productive, and compliant workplace culture.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What are the most common safety hazards in the workplace?
Common hazards include locked or obstructed exits, failure to follow proper safety procedures (like lockout/tagout), poor hiring practices, employee fatigue from extended shifts, and ineffective safety incentives. Each hazard can compound risks if not addressed systematically.
How can I balance employee care with company liability?
Balancing care and liability requires transparent communication, empathy, and strict adherence to regulations. Develop and follow clear incident response procedures, advocate for injured workers ethically, and document all safety activities to protect both employees and your organization.
Why is involving employees in safety decisions important?
Involving employees creates trust and cooperation, reduces the likelihood of backlash, and encourages a proactive safety culture. Employees better understand hazards and can provide useful insights into practical solutions.
How can data help improve workplace safety?
Data such as time-motion studies, incident reports, performance metrics, and cost analyses provide objective evidence that helps management understand risks and the impact of safety interventions, creating buy-in for change.
What should I do if management resists implementing safety measures?
Focus on presenting evidence-based solutions highlighting the financial and human costs of ignoring safety. Collaborate with employee representatives and use industry standards or regulatory guidance to support your case for improvements.









