You’re encouraged to share this important message with your drilling firm’s operations personnel:

Safety meetings are an opportunity for management and your safety department to communicate to employees how they can do their jobs safer and better.

Topics discussed in safety meetings may be topics that you are familiar with, or topics that you have limited knowledge about. If the topic is something that you are familiar with, it may be easy to tune-out and not listen to the safety information presented. Do yourself a big favor and listen to the information as if you have never heard it before. You may just learn something new – maybe about the newest protective equipment or a smarter, more efficient way to do your job.

Information passed on in a safety meeting has a rather important purpose – to stop you or one of your co-workers from being injured. Safety meetings also allow employees an opportunity to relay safety/health concerns or ideas for improvement to their supervisors.

Accidents result from unsafe acts or unsafe conditions. For a variety of reasons, unsafe acts typically account for 90 percent of all accidents, according to some experts. Safety meetings serve as a preventive measure against unsafe acts by educating employees on how they can do their jobs safely.

If you still are not sold, let’s look at the potential cost of accidents – more specifically, how accidents can directly affect you.

• Death – The ultimate unwanted result. Where does this leave your loved ones?
  
  
• Financial cost – Lost pay or reduction in pay. Who pays the bills? Are you the sole income producer in your household?
  
  
• Pain and suffering – An obvious detriment desired by no one.
  
  
• Disability – A life-changing experience. Now you’re not able to do what you’re used to doing. Maybe now you can’t cast that fishing rod, ride that bike, hug your wife, lift your child, or simply see? Or perhaps you’re confined to a wheelchair.
  
  
• Competiveness on bidding jobs – Other than payroll and benefits, workers’ compensation insurance and accident costs may represent the bulk of a company’s operating expense. When a company’s operating expenses increase, it then is less competitive to bid jobs. If your company is not awarded jobs, where does that leave you?
  
  
• Your co-workers’ safety – Perhaps you and your co-worker have been working together for some time now. Chances are you may spend as much or more time with your co-workers than you do with your own family. Obviously, you do not want anything bad to happen to them. Watch out for their safety, too.

Safety meetings are a perfect opportunity for you to communicate any safety ideas or concerns that you may have. Participate in your safety meetings. If you don’t participate, your ideas will not be heard. Who knows, the idea that you have may very well save a co-worker’s life – or even your own.
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This article is provided through the courtesy of the team at Drill-Safe.com, a drilling-specific safety resource designed to continually update important safety information necessary to ensure the consistency of standards around the world.