In part 1, we said that it made sense to team up a young worker with an experienced one. Except that we have to be careful with whom we match young workers.
There are good and bad safety attitudes among experienced workers that I will describe in detail below. The supervisor must best mix the experience to equip himself with a high-performance team with a safety attitude or mentality.
The bad attitude regarding safety in the experienced worker is one who disregards the ideas of others. His idea is always the right one. The safety rules for him are only production reducers to lengthen the work. He criticizes innovations, begins his sentences with “in my time, it was simpler” or “if I was a supervisor...” He does not like changes and for himself, his partner is a burden because he doesn’t work like him. Most of the time, he’s on autopilot, does not analyze the dangers, because he no longer sees them and if, unfortunately, someone tells him to be careful, he regards them as being an alien. For him, reporting the “close calls” is a waste of time, because an inch is as good as a foot.
The good safety attitude of an experienced worker is often linked to a worker for whom he or one of his acquaintances in the past has suffered a work accident or a big “close call”. He can also be a worker with an open mind who has followed and is interested in the changes that have taken place in the OHS field over the years. He takes the time to analyze his tasks, his work area and follows the established work procedure. If his little inner voice tells him to ask, "Is it safe?" he stops everything, takes a step back and asks for advice or consults with his co-workers. He developed safer working techniques while respecting the schedule and sometimes ahead of schedule, because everything is planned and orderly. He is a very good candidate to team up with a young, inexperienced worker.
As we can see in parts 1 and 2 of this article, it is up to the supervisor and it is his duty to mix experience, safety attitude, young experienced or not, etc.
Since an engine needs a good air/fuel mixture to function well, the supervisor needs a good mix of experience to meet the schedule and budget. More importantly, a site without accident is one where all the young workers will receive and learn from the best experience and, one day, they will pass it on.
