Posted By Merv Newman Off-The-Job H&S has been a standard within Du Pont for lo, these many years. Sites even post their OTJ statistics and set objectives as they do for on-the-job H&S. Within our overall annual communication/training programme which called for a change of theme every month, we aimed for about half of the subjects to have a joint On/Off-The-Job interest : * Food handling and hygiene, healthy diets, storage (where do you store that unwrapped chicken ? on the top or the bottom shelf of your fridge ?) * Chemical labelling, handling and storage (where do you store your drain un-blocker ? Hint : look under the kitchen sink. And do you wear safety glasses and adequate gloves when using it ?) * Lifting and carrying (when did you last move furniture around ? did you get help with heavy loads, did you wear safety shoes and gloves ?) * Tool safety : our sports and sexual club loaned out DIY equipment which was all tested and labelled. Maintenance department gave lessons in safe use * Safe driving, including free, voluntary check rides with a gold standard driver (me) I did about 300 of those before I thankfully got promoted. There was also one special off-the-cuff event organised after a couple of OTJ injuries : We live in an area which is heavily wooded. Most people in the villages use wood burning stoves for the central heating and we all have chain saws. (yes, me too). 15 cubic meters of logs for about £200 does my heating for the year. On one sunday afternoon two employees received chain saw injuries. One was working in the woods behind his house, by himself. He tripped and slashed his thigh. Not too bad, a few stiches. The other was working with his brother who had the chain saw. Brother with chain saw turned to talk to other brother. Other brother had his back turned (fortunately) and got slashed across the bum. Again, stiches required. Both were at work the following day. One on a sitting job, the other standing. The two foremen involved contacted the local forestry college. Later that week they arrived with a lorry load of wood, a few chain saws and all the protective gear. During the day employees were invited to take a few minutes to go to the car park and see demonstrations of the safe use of chain saws. The instructors got a free lunch, lots of coffee and a donation for the college. The supervisors had not asked my advice, nor authorisation from the production manager. They did get a letter of commendation from the plant manager. So, you can plan it out or you can improvise after hearing of an incident. Ask for suggestions from your employees. If I remember right, the year I left Du Pont our objective was a maximum of 4 OTJ LTIs for 500 employees. On-The-Job had been at Zero for 8 years. "Safety is not just a 9 to 5 thing. It's for life"