By Andrew P. McCoy and Fred Sargent
Published On May 15, 2022
FOR MOST ELECTRICAL CONTRACTORS, the terms “workplace safety” and “occupational safety” inspire mental images of construction sites. The changing nature of work and home life dictates a need to expand our imagination. Today we need everyplace safety or round-the-clock safety.
We have all heard construction supervisors proudly explain that their most important objective is for everyone on the job to leave work in the same physical condition they arrived in. More recent advances in safety programs include concepts, such as Incident and Injury Free, that expand safety beyond the job site and into workers’ personal lives.
Notably, safety programs fail to focus enough on the bodily wear and tear workers suffer every day. These are the subtle assaults on their bodies that cumulatively add up over time, yet often could have been limited or prevented. Many consider it “out of bounds” to express concern about the potential consequences of their workers’ activities and behaviors after hours.
These factors have led us to roll out a new concept we named “Self and Safety.”
To talk about the “self” component, we invited Joe Kopko, a seasoned risk and loss expert who worked for years as a safety manager in a construction company and is now chief risk officer and vice president of commercial lines at insurance agency Seubert & Associates, to help us make the case for conjoining personal wellness with job-site safety.