I work at a tech headquarters in the Silicon Valley and the company has an environmental health and safety team under the same facilities department that I am under. I work closely with them because I am also being CPR/AED & First Aid certified and the fitness center is a high concern of worker safety on campus. Due to being a tech company, we have many labs on campus which contain various chemicals. These labs are for authorized personnel only and each lab have a different protocol depending on what the lab does or contains. These requirements could include anything from clothing requirements, gloves & mask requirements, google requirements, or having to be completely covered with gowns & face mask requirements.
A barrier workers face, especially at my workplace, is ergonomic barriers. We have a lot of employees who sit for hours at a time which poses serious back/neck/spine health. A fun part of my job in the Fitness Center is showing people exercises to combat excessive back pain from sitting for to long. Another barrier, that the environmental health and safety team face a lot, is that employees on campus feel that they don’t need to wear the required items when entering “hotspot” labs. The team is constantly informing employees about the various health and safety risks for not complying to the rules of the labs.
I saw a headline a few years ago that said sitting is the new smoking. Ergonomics is really important. My whole family has bad backs to boot - that's cool you get to work to combat that for people! I may ask you for some trade secrets ;)
ReplyDeleteErgonomic barriers is a challenge I face as well. Unfortunately our new office does not have a stand up desk; this is something I loved at my previous job. I can request one but I do not see this request being approved, especially since it is not a right to have it.
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