Safety Training and the Home: Beyond the Workplace

Safety and Home Training: How Good Practices Benefit Home Health

Occupational safety training does not just protect workers at work: it extends to everyday life at home and in the community. Consider this: just as organizational or project management tools can be helpful in managing a home, so can the habits and awareness developed through professional security training. You can’t lift well at work and lift a heavy box at home any old way! And you wouldn’t leave trip hazards in your living space when you’re in the habit of spotting them and removing them during your work day.

Apart from those obvious cases, it is also worth thinking about how the concept of safety can be properly applied in the place where, after all, we spend most of our time: at home. How can we step up our home security game and make our lives with our loved ones safer and more fulfilling? Read on to find out!

The Modern Home Calls for Modern Awareness

Yes, home is a place to relax but these days even a small apartment can be so full of features and accessories that, despite the peaceful atmosphere, the chances of an accident increase. To take just one eye-opening statistic, a widely cited Swedish study found that home/entertainment spaces are nearly nine times more deadly than transportation when it comes to unintentional injury deaths, completely upending the conventional wisdom.

As the complexity of modern life has increased, so has the complexity of both our workplaces and our homes: for most of us, our living spaces now include a combination of electronics and conveniences designed to be safe and easy to use. Our kitchens mainly involve the use of energy such as electricity, water, and heat, which, in general, we don’t think of as dangerous.

However, with the involvement of the wrong people, the risk of unexpected events can quickly increase, especially when we are tired, distracted or disturbed in our judgment by the likes of alcohol or (it can happen even in the best families!) emotion. The key takeaway here is that, next time, look at your neighborhood the way a security professional might: what dangers might be “waiting to happen” given the fact that residents might not always behave rationally?

The Unexpected Can Be Around Any Corner

Let’s look at some everyday situations to show you what we mean:

• Relaxing over a glass of wine with dinner, it can be easy to forget that the stove is still very hot. In addition, it is possible that a younger member of the family, tasked with setting the dinner table by a busy parent, has placed a stack of newspapers near a leaking heat source. In an instant, the vague awareness that something is hot can quickly turn into panic as the charred paper grows into a raging fire.

Sadly, more than four out of five European fire deaths occur at home.

• When it’s cold, you’re not long out of bed and you’re rushing to work or school, it can be easy to forget that the soil outside the front door may have a new trick after a sharp temperature drop while you’re sleeping soundly and warm in your hot room.
• Pets too (rarely a feature in the average workplace!) can present a whole other set of unexpected challenges. Are there any extended clues that could be washing a standing puppy unaware of the danger lurking within the useless coil of rubber that your four-legged friend sees as just another “chew toy”?

“Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans,” as John Lennon once sang: that’s the way we’re made and the way things work in this world. The trick, as we’ll see in the next section, is to skip the unexpected in the form of a thorough understanding of health and safety that will work for you day and night, wherever you are.

The Four “Districts” Behind the Scenes of Many Home Accidents

So, how can your occupational health and safety training help in such diverse and unplanned situations at home? Reason is a universal human characteristic. Look closely at why mistakes or accidents happen, and you will almost always find that the person involved was experiencing one or more of these four mental or physical conditions:

1. The urgency
   If we are in a hurry, not only do we risk getting hurt, but we can also damage our relationships. For example, when we are late and stressed, others may think that we are careless or do not manage our time well.
2. Frustrated
   Imagine being annoyed while waiting longer than usual in line for your morning coffee. You might snap at an innocent barista who has actually been a big help to you before: not a good way to start your day—or hers! When we are angry about something, we tend to be vulnerable.
3. You are tired
   We all know it’s true: mistakes accumulate when we’re tired. That is especially important in home life, since most evenings of the week we have already spent the day working hard.
4. Complacency
   This last one is tricky. When we do something repeatedly, our mind tends to go on autopilot. The more skilled we become at something, the more likely our mind is to wander. But this is exactly where we need to pay more attention.

Homes and workplaces may seem very different, but when it comes to calculating risk there is one thing in common: a person!

Safety Mindset To The Rescue: Home Safety Training

The good thing about the risk profile being the same at work and at home is that the remedy is basically the same. This is why we mentioned above that your health and safety training can be more powerful if you apply it to life outside of your working hours as well. Why not try these methods?

1. Be aware when you are in a dangerous situation (such as tiredness or urgency), and stop yourself before making a big mistake. We call this “balance your situation.”
2. Learn from small mistakes and misses, whether they are yours or those of your loved ones: this is the data you need, to avoid the most consequential accidents!
3. Watch how others do things around the house: you may be doing the same thing if you’re honest, but it’s often easier to spot dangerous behavior when it’s being demonstrated by someone else. A large one leaves the gas stove cooking while you run a quick errand in another room; a bright-eyed witness would be quick to point out that you are actually leaving a naked flame unattended–never a good idea.
4. Build better safety habits into your daily routine. Soon in life we ​​come to understand that routine is a great power if you can learn to use it!

Safety is not something that stops at the end of the workday. It is a concept and practice that can benefit all areas of life, including at home with family and friends.

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