September Newsletter

5 Key Habits of a Safety Conscious Company

The attached article is courtesy of EMC Insurance Companies

Safety in the workplace isn’t just a matter telling employees to behave safely. It’s much more complex. It involves changing old habits, developing a safety program, identifying responsibilities, and creating checklists for equipment, facility and fleet tasks. Other key components of safety include ongoing training and testing efforts, reviewing accident data (including near misses), keeping up on housekeeping and ensuring sufficient safety budgets.

So how do you determine which tasks—or habits—are most critical to safety in your workplace? Andy Benson, EMC Senior Risk Improvement Representative, suggests five key habits that are common among companies with impressive safety records. If your organization practices each of these, you’ll be primed for safety success. Click here to continue reading.

Real Life Lessons From Truck Drivers Injured at Work: Get Out, Get Under, or Get In?

This article is courtesy of Midwestern Insurance Alliance

Tornadoes are unpredictable, inevitable, damaging and sometimes deadly. Experiencing one is a very humbling event. You get to see just how powerful nature can be and just how helpless we can be. In addition, the outcome of a tornado is virtually unexplainable. One structure may remain undamaged while all others surrounding it are totally demolished.

With rapidly improving technology, the National Weather Service has radically improved their ability to predict the possibility of tornadic activity; even so, they still can’t definitely state when or where a tornado will occur. Most often, it literally comes down to a matter of seconds of notification and subsequent reaction.

This presents a very dangerous situation for long haul truck drivers. One item to consider is the fact that the driver may not be listening to a local/regional radio broadcast, consequently missing out on the local weather situation. In addition, if the driver is aware of an impending tornado he most likely is not familiar with the immediate area and may not know where the best place of refuge may be. Most often the choices are stay in your truck, get out and lie in a ditch, or seek shelter under an overpass.

This was the very situation that Linnie faced early last summer. He was driving east through Kansas (tornado alley) one afternoon when a tornado suddenly developed. Click here to read Linnie’s story.