Safety first

Have you ever heard of a ‘Safety Day’ being celebrated at an office? I can hear many people saying - No. Even I didn’t know anything about it until one of my clients celebrated it. So, what do they do on ‘Safety Day’? The idea is to lay emphasis on the safety rules that everyone should follow in their day to day life. So on this day, they give a T-shirt to all employees that they need to wear on that particular day. They also give Safety Awards, conduct a Safety Day quiz and also have a safety day T-shirt painting competition. All of this is done to keep people alert about safety protocols, else they may forget. They have a very strict safety policy which has to be followed by everyone - starting from the vice president to the office assistant. There is no exception, even for auditors. A mail is sent as a warning to a manager if anyone violates any one of the safety policies. More than two warnings can also lead to banning the person from entering the client premises. Their safety policy mainly includes wearing seat belts/helmets. So out of compulsion, even I started wearing seat belts. It was mandatory to wear seat belts/helmets to enter the client’s parking place. Even in the driving school, they didn’t teach us how to wear a seat belt. So it’s been nearly four years after I learnt to drive a car that I learn to wear a seat belt! In the initial days, I felt they were overdoing things in following these safety policies. Why do we have to wear a seat belt in a country which is full of traffic and you cannot drive more than 40 km/hr during peak office hours anyway? I used to wear the seat belt only for 2 minutes before I entered the parking area. But I realised the need for it after I heard from one of the client who met with an accident. There was severe damage to the car but he didn’t sustain any injury only because he was wearing his seat belt. From that day I’ve started wearing my seat belt every time I drive my car. Why do we find it so difficult to wear helmets if we can wear shoes to work? It mainly depends on our mind-set and how we’ve been brought up. If we follow certain things, our kids will eventually follow it. I strongly believe that we should start fostering these safety measures in people’s minds. Another important but rather weird safety policy followed at my clients place is to hold hand rails when climbing up/down the staircase. I started following it even at shopping malls or any other place where I use the staircase. I was finding it so difficult to let go of that habit at other places as well. The crux here is, we should make it a habit rather than a policy, and then people will follow it. On a lighter note, when a slow animal like a tortoise wears a helmet, then why don’t we use it when we travel at a speed fifty times more than that!!! I believe we should at least encourage people to start wearing helmets/seat belts in all our offices. It indeed does save lives!