Ripple effects.
Faraway wildfires may seem like unfortunate news events that don’t affect you if you live on the East Coast. But even if your home or workplace isn’t threatened, all of that burning fuel can affect the air quality in your breezy Midwestern or East Coast city. Remember the photographs we saw out of New York City last summer? The atmosphere was an otherworldly orange. Hundreds of miles away, particulate matter was billowing into the atmosphere from Canadian forest fires, but the air quality in New York City was dangerous, and the low visibility grounded airplanes.
Just as a lightning strike in a dry patch of woods in Quebec can turn the sky orange in New York City, the actions we take to keep our people safe on the jobsite, can have far-reaching effects.
Imagine that you see that one of your best carpenters, let’s call him Joe, isn’t wearing his safety glasses—but you don’t say anything because you want to keep the peace. Then Joe gets a sliver of wood lodged in his eye and has to go to the hospital. Now you’re short a worker for the rest of the day or maybe even longer.
But this injury, while it’s painful and unfortunate for Joe, may be more than just inconvenient for you as a supervisor. For instance, Joe’s absence could cause you to miss an important deadline. His time away from the jobsite might have an impact on other workers and on morale. If he has permanent vision loss, you might have lost your best carpenter.
It wouldn’t be hard to continue this thought experiment to include other ripple effects of Joe’s injury that go beyond the workplace. He might miss an important family event while he’s in the hospital. His injury could have negative effects on his family and his community.
As a supervisor, you can’t be everywhere all the time, but you can act on information that you have. If you notice someone who isn’t wearing safety glasses, stop and correct the problem. Tell them to take the time to go back to their car and get their safety glasses or take them to the trailer to get a new pair. By acting, you could prevent an injury and the negative ripple effects it causes. And you never know what positive ripple effects are created because that injury never happened.