Never Events

“Safety is an attitude.  How’s yours?”  That tagline was one I created for one of my clients as a way to get the staff and management excited and bought into the new injury prevention system that I was assisting in design and implementation.  Attitude is vitally important to success whether it’s in regards to safety, sales, marketing or performance.  A company’s attitude towards employee health, wellness and safety will go a long way into attaining zero work-related injuries.

“It was just an accident.”  “S/he made a bad judgment.”  “S/he behaved unsafely.”

Do any of those causes sound familiar to you?  We’ve all heard these or similar reasons for why an injury occurred.  However, are they the true root cause?  The “cause” for injuries or accidents is typically attributed in some way to “human error”.

Have you ever thought about the products you use each day and how and why you use them?  Consumer products are a huge category to tackle so I’m going to focus in on an item that most of use and/or interact in some way:  the car.  The “never event” for a car is pretty easy to see—accidents can cause serious injury and/or death.  The design of cars has significant HF/E involved in them—good and bad.

Have you ever had an experience with a product or a machine in which you said to yourself, “This is a poor design”?  Or, have you ever walked into a space (office, store, restaurant, etc.) find yourself saying, “Why is this here and not over there?” or “What were they thinking (when they designed this)”?